Due to the large number of states in the deterministic system after dimension-expansion and the presence of many zero elements in the PCE coefficients, the problem scale is large. Discretizing state variables will cause unnecessary computational time consumption. Meanwhile, the uncertainty propagation module only needs control input information to obtain the statistical laws of the system states that meet the accuracy requirements. Therefore, this paper adopts a direct shooting method with only discrete control variables to solve the robust planning problem of gliding trajectory, with the number of discrete points
N set to 65. The relevant parameters of the projectile and target are shown in
Table 1, and the parameters related to uncertainty are shown in
Table 2. The parameters of the PID controller are adjusted and adapted during the simulation process, set to
,
and
.
3.1. Uncertainty Propagation of Gliding Trajectory under Specified Control Commands
When uncertainty factors are not considered, conducting trajectory planning based on minimizing control effort consumption as the objective function can yield the deterministic optimal control commands
, which is not detailed in this paper. To verify the effectiveness and superiority of the NIPCE method proposed in this paper, according to the discussion in
Section 2.3, substituting
into the high-dimensional system equation (16) for uncertainty propagation, the simulation results are shown in
Figure 3 (where the symbols
and
represent the mean value and standard deviation of the state variables, the black dotted lines in the figures represent the constraint thresholds of the state variables, and in the legend, FOPCE and COPCE respectively denote the full-order PCE and cutoff-order PCE).
From the results in
Figure 3(
a), (
i), and (
k), it is obvious that under the influence of various uncertain factors, the mean value of state at the end of the trajectory violates the constraint conditions indicated in equation (25). From
Figure 3(
j) and (
l), it is observed that there is a significant dispersion in the terminal position of the trajectory. Therefore, robust planning of the gliding trajectory is required to modify the deviations in state and reduce the impact of uncertainty factors. Furthermore, by observing all subplots in
Figure 3, it is noted that the results of the FOPCE method are highly consistent with the MCS results. When using the basis-truncation strategy (corresponding to the COPCE method) to eliminate high-order polynomial terms, the standard deviations of the terms
,
and
with relatively high nonlinearity (
Figure 3(
b), (
d), (
f)) in Equation (4) show some deviation from the MCS results, but within an acceptable range of accuracy. The deviation occurs only during intermediate processes, with the statistical characteristics at the end of the trajectory remaining unaffected. This analysis illustrates that the NIPCE method proposed in this paper is competent for quantifying the uncertainties of gliding trajectories, and in subsequent robust planning processes, a truncated PCE model can be used instead of a full-order PCE model to enhance computational efficiency.
The simulation in this paper is based on a personal computer with 4 cores CPU E3-1230 V2 3.30GHz. The calculation times of single uncertainty propagation of the gliding trajectory using different methods on the MATLAB 2022b platform are shown in
Table 3.
The results from
Table 3 indicate that compared to the MCS method, the FOPCE method can significantly improve computational efficiency while ensuring accuracy. The FOPCE method with single-core computation takes less time than MCS with multi-core parallel computation, achieving a reduction of 79.5% in time consumption. Employing a basis-truncation strategy to remove unnecessary high-order cross-terms can further reduce problem scale and computational time, facilitating the optimization process of robust planning. Under single-core computation the same, the computation time of COPCE is reduced by 84.2% compared to FOPCE.
3.2. Open-Loop Robust Planning
Based on the discussion in section 2.4.1, using the deterministic effort-optimal control commands
as the initial value for iteration, the open-loop robust planning results of the gliding trajectory are shown in
Figure 4 (in the legend, DEO-Trj represents the results of uncertainty propagation along the trajectory under the influence of
, and ORO-Trj represents the uncertainty propagation results of the open-loop robust optimal control commands
).
Based on
Figure 4(
a), (
i) and (
k), the open-loop robust planning corrects the bias in the mean value of terminal states of the trajectory, ensuring compliance with the constraints outlined in Equation (25).
Figure 4(
a), (
g), (
i) and (
k) show that the curvature in the middle section of the robust optimal trajectory increases compared to the reference trajectory, resulting in reduced projectile velocity and a longer flight time. This implies that increasing the mid-trajectory curvature enhances the robustness of the planned trajectory, aligning with the conclusions drawn using the LAC method in reference[
2].
Figure 4(
j) and (
l) reveal that the open-loop robust planning significantly reduces the dispersion at the trajectory's terminal point, with standard deviations of altitude and lateral deviation decreasing by 23.6% and 35.3%, respectively. This effectively minimizes the sensitivity of the planned trajectory to uncertainties. However, as observed in
Figure 4(
m) and (
n), the control commands of the robust optimal trajectory significantly increase compared to the reference trajectory, indicating that the trajectory's robustness is achieved at the expense of additional control effort consumption. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the projectile remains at control saturation for a considerable period, posing significant challenges to subsequent guidance control system design. If the deviation of uncertainties is substantial, a gliding projectile with limited maneuverability may fail to track the planned trajectory, leading to mission failure. Therefore, considering the alignment between the planned trajectory and the guidance control system during planning and conducting closed-loop robust trajectory planning research holds significant practical importance.
To further validate the effectiveness of the open-loop robust planning, the robust optimal control commands
are applied to the original stochastic dynamics model expressed in Equation (4) for 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations. The comparison between the actual distribution of the terminal positions of the gliding trajectory and the theoretical covariance ellipse is illustrated in
Figure 5.
As from the results in
Figure 5, it can be indicated that by the theoretical covariance ellipse adequately encompasses the actual terminal positions the of the trajectory, with the target located at the center of the ellipse, results consistent with the planning expectations in
Section 2.4.1 (It should be pointed out that there is a situation where the altitude
y is negative at the terminal position of the trajectory in the figure, which is not an erroneous result, but a statistical law obtained by the model through uncertainty propagation when the independent variable is
x. Through subsequent closed-loop robust planning, the projectile will precisely hit the target). However, due to the limited control capabilities of the projectile and the absence of closed-loop feedback from a guidance control system, the open-loop robust planning still exhibits some dispersion at the terminal phase, even with minimized objective function. This analysis underscores the necessity of pursuing research in closed-loop robust planning.
3.3. Closed-Loop Robust Planning
Based on the discussion in
Section 2.4.2, considering the scenario where uncertainties are skewed to the semi-extreme values, a PID controller is used to track the open-loop robust optimal trajectory, providing closed-loop feedback for control commands. The closed-loop control effort consumption is calculated and incorporated into the objective function. This paper employs the weight of terminal position dispersion
in Equation (32) as the basis for distinguishing the following three scenarios.
Scenario 1:,which indicates that the terminal dispersion is allowed, only the state deviations are modified, and the control effort consumption is minimized.
Scenario 2:,which means that both terminal dispersion and control effort consumption are taken into consideration, and both are equally important.
Scenario 3:,which means taking both the terminal dispersion and the control effort consumption into consideration, but the former is more important.
The results of closed-loop robust planning of gliding trajectory in different scenarios are shown in
Figure 6.
From the results in
Figure 6, it is evident that with the introduction of a guidance control module, the closed-loop robust planning outcome is no longer a statistical law. The projectile, under the influence of the guidance law, precisely hits the target, eliminating terminal dispersion. Even under relatively stringent deviation conditions, the projectile still manages to track the reference trajectory with minimal control saturation (It can be imagined that with smaller deviations, the projectile's control effort consumption would be lower). This proves the effectiveness and superiority of closed-loop planning.
As the terminal dispersion weight
increases, the curvature in the middle section of the closed-loop robust optimal trajectory correspondingly increases, gradually approaching the open-loop robust optimal trajectory (as shown in
Figure 4(
i) and 4(
k)), and the control commands also increase accordingly. It can be inferred that when
is sufficiently large, the proportion of control effort consumption in the objective function Equation (32) will approach zero. The closed-loop robust planning will degenerate into open-loop robust planning, and the closed-loop robust optimal trajectory will converge to the open-loop robust optimal trajectory.
In order to compare the results in different scenarios more intuitively, the specific values of each item in the closed-loop planning objective function Equation (32) are shown in
Table 4.
From the results in
Table 4, it is evident that when considering only the correction of state deviation without accounting for terminal dispersion of the trajectory, the difference in control effort consumption compared to the deterministic optimal trajectory is relatively small. As
increases, the robustness of the trajectory improves, accompanied by a corresponding increase in control effort consumption. Therefore, for gliding-guided projectiles, a trade-off needs to be made between robust optimality and energy optimality, fully exploiting their limited control capabilities to maximize comprehensive performance.
3.4 The Influence of the Uncertain factors' Deviation Degree on Closed-Loop Guidance
In the process of closed-loop robust trajectory planning, all uncertain factors are biased to the semi-extreme situation, which is a conservative approach. According to relevant simulation experiences and measured data, the degree of deviation of each random parameter during the actual flight of the gliding projectile is not the same. Therefore, based on the degree of deviation of uncertain factors, this paper distinguishes the following four conditions.
Condition 1: The deviations of uncertain factors are all set to corresponding values to simulate the upper bound of the extreme deviation situation.
Condition 2: The deviations of uncertain factors are alternately set to the corresponding and values to simulate the actual flight environment.
Condition 3: The deviations of uncertain factors are all set to corresponding values to simulate the lower bound of the extreme deviation situation.
Condition 4: Except for the velocity deviation at the control-start point set to , the deviations of other uncertain factors are still set to the corresponding values. Condition 4 serves as an additional control group for Condition 3.
Taking Scenario 3 in
Section 3.3 as an example, using the closed-loop guidance law based on the PID controller designed in this paper, the tracking effects of the gliding projectile on the planned trajectory under different conditions are shown in
Figure 7 (Ref-Trj in the legend represents the reference trajectory, Act-Trj represents the actual trajectory, and the suffix C is used to distinguish conditions).
The results from
Figure 7 indicate that under different conditions, the projectile has successfully tracked the planned trajectory in the lateral plane, while the tracking situation in the longitudinal plane is relatively complex. Specifically, the tracking performance of the projectile trajectory is marginal under Condition 1, good under Condition 2, and under both Condition 3 and Condition 4 the projectile fails to track the planned trajectory. It can be inferred that based on the PID controller designed in this paper, the lateral tracking of the gliding projectile is easier compared to altitude tracking, the degree of deviation of uncertain factors leads to different effects on trajectory tracking. To further compare and analyze the influence of uncertain factor deviations on closed-loop guidance, the tracking performance of the planned trajectory under different conditions in different scenarios is shown in
Table 5 (where ✓ indicates good tracking performance, × indicates tracking failure, and △ indicates marginal tracking performance).
The analysis in
Section 3.3 reveals that the robustness of the planned trajectory increases from Scenario 1 to Scenario 3, with both the trajectory curvature and projectile flight time increasing sequentially, while the control margin of the projectile decreases accordingly. Therefore, based on the results in
Table 5, it can be inferred that within a reasonable deviation range, the closed-loop guidance law designed in this study is most sensitive to changes in the projectile velocity deviation at the control-start point. When the velocity value is too large (Condition 1), for Scenarios 1 and 2 with relatively high control margins, the projectile can accurately track the planned trajectory through proper control. However, for Scenario 3 with insufficient control margin, the tracking performance is marginal. When velocity deviation at the control-start point is reasonable and other parameter deviations are similar to real-world conditions (Condition 2), the projectile in different scenarios can precisely track the planned trajectory. When the value of velocity is too small (Condition 3), the effective range of the projectile decreases, making it impossible to hit the target or track the planned trajectory. When the velocity is reduced by a normal amount but other parameter deviations are significant (Condition 4), the tracking performance of the projectile on the desired trajectory is negatively correlated with the control margin. In summary, to achieve good closed-loop guidance effects, the projectile velocity at the control-start point should not be lower than the design value of the reference trajectory, nor should it deviate significantly from the design value. Therefore, to alleviate the design pressure on the guidance control system, when planning the full trajectory of a gliding projectile, it is a good choice to slightly increase the design value of the projectile velocity at the control-start point.