Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) comprise the essential algorithms and systems necessary for ensuring the autonomous, stable, and safe flight of aerospace vehicles. Navigation determines the vehicle’s attitude, position, and velocity, providing crucial input for Guidance to generate steering commands aligned with a desired trajectory. Control, in turn, executes these guidance inputs through control surface deflections and thrusters while ensuring the vehicle’s stability. GNC serves as a pivotal facilitator for the rapid advancement of unmanned aerial systems, integrating elements of automatic control, mission planning, decision-making, and intelligent systems. The research within the GNC stream focuses on achieving higher levels of autonomy for both single and multiple-vehicle missions through innovative algorithms, vehicle design, and extensive indoor and outdoor flight trials. The group’s interests also extend to space systems for various space missions, optical pointing systems, and air-traffic modeling and management.

The GNC group at the Aerospace Engineering department of IISc has made notable advancements in guidance and control theory, particularly in trajectory shaping, spacecraft landing, UAV autonomy, optimal control, and intelligent systems. These advancements have garnered recognition for their importance in aerospace missions. Techniques have been developed for shaping trajectories while adhering to terminal constraints, crucial for precise missions. Moreover, advanced guidance strategies have been devised for the safe and efficient landing of spacecraft on various surfaces. The group has also spearheaded methods to optimize trajectories and develop control laws for ensuring resilience to uncertainties and disturbances. Additionally, the group has made significant contributions in autonomous flight algorithms, enhancing the autonomy and agility of UAVs. These advancements, coupled with innovative design approaches, have contributed to the development of highly capable and efficient UAVs for a variety of applications. Across a range of missions—from satellite deployment to multi-UAV coordination—the group’s contributions have elevated autonomy and reliability, representing significant strides in aerospace guidance and control.

Current and anticipated areas of research focus of the group encompass a range of topics. These include developing sophisticated guidance and control algorithms for drone mobility systems, leveraging learning-based approaches to enhance the control of autonomous vehicles, devising efficient control methods for space trajectory planning and spacecraft control, addressing the increasingly pressing issue of space debris management, and designing novel guidance systems to improve the performance and safety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in various operational scenarios. These research endeavours aim to address key challenges and unlock new capabilities, paving the way for enhanced functionality and reliability across a broad spectrum of aerospace applications.