Trajectory tracking for UAV with saturation of velocities

A simple strategy to saturate the reference velocities when guiding an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to accomplish trajectory-tracking tasks is proposed. Such a controller has two parts: a kinematic controller to generate reference velocities for the vehicle and a state-variables change with a PD controller to guarantee the tracking of such velocities. This characterizes a cascade controller and guarantees bounded UAV velocities along the trajectory. Simulations involving UAVs with different characteristics were carried out to check the effectiveness of the designed controller, whose results validate the proposed method.