A three-dimensional guidance logic for continuous curvature path following

Abstract

A new simple and practical guidance logic is proposed for a vehicle to follow a general continuous curvature path defined in a three-dimensional space. The proposed guidance logic is formulated in such a way that the guidance law is to generate the command acceleration such that a vehicle pursues the designed moving virtual target, and this eventually makes a vehicle to follow a desired path. The position and velocity of the virtual target are specified explicitly by introducing the concept of the projection point and the tangentially receding distance. Numerical simulations are conducted to evaluate the precise path-following capability of the proposed guidance logic.