Geofencing trajectory estimation for small-scale fixed-wing UAVs

The rapid rise in the popularity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has opened new frontiers in fields such as environmental monitoring, agriculture surveying, and infrastructure inspection. However, the proliferation of UAVs also brings increased safety and regulatory concerns, particularly with regard to keeping aircraft within designated airspace boundaries, commonly enforced through geofencing techniques. While geofencing strategies have been extensively studied for rotary-wing UAVs, applying them to fixed-wing platforms introduces unique challenges, due to their kinematic constraints. This thesis presents a novel trajectory estimation model explicitly designed for geofencing applications involving small-scale fixed-wing UAVs. At the core of the proposed method is the Beta Trajectory, a kinematic model that accounts not only for curvature constraints, bounded by the maximum roll angle of the aircraft, but also for constraints in the change of curvature, bounded by the maximum roll rate of the aircraft. This work demonstrates that such additional constraints, i.e., finite roll rate, account for the forward displacement of a fixed-wing aircraft during roll maneuvers and thus are critical for accurate trajectory estimation and precise evasive maneuvers. The proposed model is integrated with real-time geofencing algorithms and implemented using an open-source autopilot framework. The efficacy of the method is demonstrated through a high-fidelity, software-in-the-loop (SITL) emulation environment, as well as through physical flight testing on a real-world, small-scale, fixed-wing aircraft. Comparative studies against conventional approaches show that the Beta Trajectory provides significantly more accurate trajectory estimations under realistic roll rate constraints.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Yu, Simon

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sha, Lui Raymond

• Trajectory Estimation
• Geofencing
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Simon Yu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129339

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129339