Guidance, Navigation and Control of a Powered Parafoil Aerial Vehicle

One of the most important issues currently facing the oil and gas industries is the safety and security of pipelines which deliver crude oil from the reservoir to the refineries. Many complications such as waxing, slugging, rusting, theft, etc. obstruct the regular supply of fuel to the refineries. Continuous monitoring of pipelines is a major hurdle because of climatic conditions, length of the pipelines, identification of leakage, etc. Here we showcase an unmanned autonomous powered parachute aerial vehicle designed for monitoring such pipelines, thereby paving a way to solve this problem. The vehicle would follow a planned trajectory for following the pipeline effectively. We present here guidance, navigation and control of a powered parachute aerial vehicle. A nine degree of freedom mathematical model has been presented in detail. Lateral heading and longitudinal altitude hold controller was designed for this purpose. A path planning algorithm verified by actual flight parameters has been designed for following a trajectory using way point navigation.