Highly Fidelity Trajectory Optimization

In this chapter, the problem of time-optimal reconnaissance trajectory design for the aeroassisted vehicle is taken into account. Unlike the vast majority of previously reported works, the feasibility of using the dynamic model of high-order aeroassisted vehicle to plan the optimal flight trajectory is discussed, so as to narrow the gap between the simulation model and the real system. A highly-constrained optimal control model including six-degree-of-freedom vehicle dynamics is built. Besides, a pipelined optimization strategy is proposed in order to solve the formulated high-order trajectory planning model. Based on the variable order Radau pseudospectral method, this approach shows that the mesh grid used for discretizing the continuous system goes through several adaption iterations. This strategy can be used to smooth the flight trajectory and improve the convergence ability of the algorithm. The numerical simulation results show a few key features of the optimized flight trajectory. The effectiveness of the applied method and the high-order trajectory planning model are verified by a number of comparative studies.