Online model predictive integrated control and guidance to intercept maneuvering targets

Integrated Guidance and Control (IGC) is a method devised in a framework in which guidance and control are considered integrated within, and unified rather than independent of each other. The advantage of IGCs is their ability to use interactions between guidance and control subsystems. This methodology is employed, intended to increase the performance of the Flying Vehicle by taking advantage of the synergy between the two processes of guidance and control. This article describes the process of designing and simulating the performance of the online model predictive controller, which was devised in order to guide the Flying Vehicle in a three-dimensional scenario to minimize the time to collision as well as the miss distance to the target. As for the controller design, an online predictive model is devised. In general, the controller model can be implemented in two ways: online and offline. In the implementation of the online type, the optimization problem of the control cost function is solved online in each time step, and The solution to this problem will determine the optimal control signal. According to the simulations, it was shown that the use of the proposed controller and the application of the integrated guidance and control model, led to smaller values for the Flying Vehicle-target miss distance and the time to collision as compared to those from the PID and LQR controllers