UAV Adaptive Automatic Control at Rendezvous and Docking Stage in Inflight Refueling

The article addresses the problem of automatic control of unmanned airial vehicle at the stage of rendezvous and docking during the process of inflight refueling. First, we give the features of inflight refueling and the structure of automatic control algorithms which we developed. Then, we show how to form the required control loop quality indicators based on the successful docking demand. Next, we describe the application of L1-adaptive approaches in the control loop and the procedure of the automatic control law design, considering the specifics of an inflight refueling task. Finally, the simulation results bring us to the conclusion that the presented control algorithm provides the required quality of transient processes, even under the essential disturbances. The prospect of this study is to develop an algorithm that provides automatic control in the process of fuel transfer from a tanker to refuel the UAV and subsequent undocking.

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