Cooperative docking guidance and control with application to civil autonomous aerial refueling

This paper proposes a novel concept for automatic docking of a boom-receptacle aerial refueling system adequate for civil aerial transportation. The receiving aircraft is assumed to keep straight and steady flight, and the docking maneuver is performed exclusively by the tanker and its boom system. As opposed to the conventional approach, the docking maneuver consists in a coordinated and guided motion of the tanker and the boom arm that is simultaneous with the extension of the nozzle tip. To achieve this, a cooperative guidance algorithm is derived in a systematic manner. The first step is to reduce the docking problem to a planar kinematic guidance problem. Subsequently, the cooperative guidance law algorithm is derived and applied to generate commands for the inner-loop controllers of the tanker aircraft and the boom. The ability to achieve successful docking is demonstrated using numerical simulations, and advantages of this concept are highlighted using a comparison with a baseline controller that uses separated control of the tanker and the boom in a sequential manner.