Cooperative docking guidance and control with application to autonomous aerial refueling

A novel cooperative guidance and control approach is applied to the docking maneuver of autonomous aerial refueling. As opposed to conventional aerial refueling, it is assumed that the tanker aircraft and an aerial refueling boom fixed thereon are controlled in an integrated manner while the receiver aircraft behaves passively. For that, a guidance law is utilized that provides translational boom pivot point accelerations and boom rotational accelerations as inputs for dedicated inner-loop controllers of the tanker aircraft and the boom. To reduce complexity of the guidance algorithm, it is formulated in a docking plane which enables the application of a two-dimensional guidance law for the actually three-dimensional control task. This paper especially focuses on controlling the boom angles and its pivot point within this docking plane. For that, also direct lift control of the tanker is used to achieve better control response. The ability to conduct successful docking is demonstrated using numerical simulations.