Optimal waypoint guidance synthesis

Abstract

In this paper, a planar waypoint guidance synthesis for missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles using the optimal impact-angle-control laws is proposed. The energy optimal trajectory optimization problem with waypoint constraints can be converted to an unconstrained optimization problem of finding the optimal waypoint pass angles for the energy impact-angle-control laws. These optimal waypoint pass angles can be simply determined from a set of linear algebraic equations. Our approach does not require time-consuming numerical optimizations so that the energy optimal trajectory passing through all the waypoints can be generated in real time.