Scaling of commanded signals in a cascade control system addressing velocity and acceleration limitations of robotic UAVs

Abstract The problem of commanded velocity scaling in the cascaded control systems designed for a 3-dimensional mobile robots is often neglected, yet it has a substantial influence on the control performance in the transient stage. In this paper, we propose two scaling methods satisfying the velocity and acceleration limitations of the commanded velocities, where the first one is fully analytical and is based on chosen heuristics, while the second method depends on solving the formulated optimization problem. Introduced methods are verified and compared in the simulation study, followed by the experimental validation on the laboratory station equipped with an autonomous airship.