arXiv subjects

Spilios Theodoulis

Publications and source records attributed to Spilios Theodoulis.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Local Path Planning and Obstacle Avoidance for an Omnicopter Platform

Autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increasingly operate in cluttered environments where global planners such as RRT* are not directly deployable at control rates. This paper presents a real-time local planning and obstacle avoidance module for an omnidirectional multirotor (omnicopter) by extending the Dynamic Window Approach to six degrees of freedom (6D-DWA). Our method achieves real-time feasibility through (i) local-map voxelisation, (ii) a compact sphere-based approximation of the vehicle geometry, and (iii) adaptive velocity sampling in the 6D search space. To improve reactivity to unknown obstacles, we introduce a context-aware "Agile Mode" that adjusts scoring weights online to trade-off between goal progress, clearance, and heading/facing constraints during evasive manoeuvres. We evaluate our approach in simulation across computational stress tests, dense-waypoint path tracking, and static/unknown obstacle scenarios. Our planner runs consistently within a 0.2s control loop, tracks waypoint-dense global paths with < 0.1m average cross-track error and 13deg average heading error, and avoids collisions in static environments. For unknown obstacle avoidance, Agile Mode achieves 79.3% success for an off-centre obstacle and 41.4% for a centred obstacle, highlighting both the effectiveness of adaptive weighting and remaining limitations in highly constrained geometries.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Closed-Loop Model-Based Control Barrier Functions with Application to Robust Flight Envelope Protection

Ensuring operation of aerospace systems within prescribed flight envelope limits is a fundamental requirement for modern flight control architectures. Flight envelope protection aims to prevent violations of aerodynamic and structural constraints, thereby mitigating risks such as stall and excessive load factors. Control barrier functions (CBFs) have emerged as a principled tool for enforcing safety by ensuring that the system state remains within a prescribed safe set. In most existing approaches, safety constraints are imposed at the control input-level based on an open-loop model of the system. While this open-loop model-based CBF formulation enables modular design, it may alter the closed-loop system dynamics, potentially compromising robustness guarantees and complicating integration into existing flight control architectures. This paper proposes a closed-loop model-based control barrier function (CLM-CBF) framework for flight envelope protection. The key idea is to enforce safety at the reference-level using an explicit model of the closed-loop system, thereby preserving the stability and robustness properties of the underlying controller. This formulation enables safety filtering without modifying the control law, facilitating modular integration and retrofitting into existing systems.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2026

Robust $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ Controller Design For INDI-Controlled Quadrotor Using Online Parameter Identification

It has recently been shown that all physical parameters of an Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) controller can be estimated onboard a multirotor within half a second, which is fast enough to do the full identification during a throw in the air. However, a robust method to tune outer loop gains for this feedback-linearizing INDI controller depending on the model parameters is still missing. This work presents the design of a robust gain-scheduled controller for attitude control of quadrotor, using an INDI-based inner loop with online identification of its system parameters. A gain-scheduled cascaded attitude controller with a feedforward filter is synthesized for a symmetric quadrotor using signal-based $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ closed-loop shaping. The resulting controller exhibits good stability margins, with nonlinear simulations confirming effective tracking performance under uncertainty. Experimental evaluation is also conducted through flight tests with full online parameter identification. Even though the identified parameters during these tests are far outside the defined uncertainty range, acceptable flight performance comparable to simulation results is maintained for actuator time constants below 40 ms.

cs.RO↗