The continuing evolving capability of guided weapons demands ever more knowledge of their development. This modern and comprehensive book covers the control aspect of guidance of missiles, torpedoes, robots, and even animal predators, from the viewpoint of the pursuer. The text studies trajectories, zones of interception, the required manoeuvre effort, time of flight, launch envelopes, and stability of the guidance process. Mathematics at first-year university level is the only prerequisite. Acquaintance with feedback control theory would be helpful to the reader. - Covers the control aspect of guidance of missiles, torpedoes, robots, and even animal predators, from the viewpoint of the pursuer - Studies trajectories, zones of interception, the required manoeuvre effort, time of flight, launch envelopes, and stability of the guidance process

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the recent advances in the domain of optimal guidance, exploring the characteristics of various optimal guidance algorithms and their pros and cons. Optimal guidance is based on the concept of trajectory optimization, which minimizes the meaningful performance index while satisfying certain terminal constraints, and by properly designing the cost function the guidance command can serve as a desired pattern for a variety of mission objectives. The book allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of how optimal guidance law can be utilized to achieve different mission objectives for missiles and UAVs, and also explores the physical meaning and working principle of different new optimal guidance laws. In practice, this information is important in ensuring confidence in the performance and reliability of the guidance law when implementing it in a real-world system, especially in aerospace engineering where reliability is the first priority.

This volume covers guidanec techniques, control and guidance, radio and radar command, guide beam, doppler and homing techniques, gryoscopic fundamentals, inertial and celestial navigation, computer applications, and actuators.