Visualizations from Efficient Collision-Avoidance Constraints for Ellipsoidal Obstacles in Optimal Control: Application to Path-Following MPC and UAVs

The provided videos present an experimental validation of a Model Predictive Path-Following Controller (MPPFC) with integrated obstacle avoidance applied to a Crazyflie 2.1 nano quadrotor. The modular, optimization-based control framework incorporates explicit constraints for avoiding collisions between arbitrarily shaped ellipsoids. At the core of the approach is a computationally efficient collision detection condition, which is extended in a novel way to the three-dimensional setting. This enables the quadrotor to follow a given geometric path while dynamically avoiding both static and moving obstacles in real time. In the case of static obstacles, a real-world experiment was conducted. In comparison, for a dynamic obstacle, a simulation-based experiment was performed. A detailed quantitative analysis, as well as further results and details of the experiment, can be found in the related publication associated with these videos.