High-level spatial Dubins airplane-based reference smoothing with low-level geometric tracking for quadrotor control
arXiv:2607.11724
The paper proposes a two-stage control framework for quadrotors, combining a high‑level Dubins‑airplane based reference smoothing step with a low‑level geometric tracking controller to follow paths while respecting lateral constraints such as obstacle contours.
Abstract
A method for the control of quadrotors is presented. It is composed of a high-level reference smoothing step and a low-level reference tracking step. The high-level step leverages the Dubins airplane model for dimensionality reduction and reduced computational complexity, and exploits its structure for decoupling, spatial modeling and the formulation of a small linear program. The low-level step leverages a geometric tracking controller, which is based on the full quadrotor model. The method is designed for the tracking of references subject to lateral constraints along the path. An example is the tracking of references along obstacle contours. It is differentiated between two different setups. Either the high-level planning step is conducted once and offline, or, alternatively, the high-level planning step is conducted recedingly online in closed-loop over a limited spatial prediction horizon.
7 pages, 12 figures