Proportional Navigation-Based Collision Avoidance for UAVs

Abstract

A collision avoidance algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on the conventional proportional navigation (PN) guidance law is investigated. The proportional navigation guidance law being applied to a wide range of missile guidance problems is tailored to the collision avoidance of UAVs. This call be accomplished by guiding the relative velocity vector of the aircraft to a vector connecting the current aircraft position to the safety boundary of the target aircraft. Stability of the proposed algorithm is also studied using the circle criterion. The stability condition can be established by choosing the navigation coefficient within a certain bound. The guidance law is extended to 3-dimensional maneuver problems. Inherent simplicity and robustness of the PN guidance law provides satisfactory collision avoidance performance with different initial conditions.