Research On Guidance And Control Technology Of The Rendezvous For Autonomous Aerial Refueling Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

UAVs will be the trend of future warfare. Autonomous aerial refueling technology of UAV will become a reality gradually. This paper studies the phase of rendezvous for aerial refueling technology of UAV.Firstly, the process aerial refueling rendezvous of UAV is analyzed, which points out the role of rendezvous phase in the entire refueling process. The objectives and requirements of rendezvous phase are given on the basis of six degrees of freedom dynamics model aircraft which lay the foundation for subsequent research.Secondly, the guidance law of unmanned receiver is studied which guide the UAV to the aerial refueling initial point(ARIP),which solves the drawbacks of slow convergence of the traditional proportional navigation law. Based on the traditional proportional navigation, the proportional guidance law with the angle constraint at the end is deduced, and the gain is adjusted and optimized to ensure proportional guidance does not fail. Furthermore, in order to make rendezvous completed in a shorter period of time, a study on speed control is conducted. A segmented control is used to meet the greater efficiency of rendezvous.Thirdly, the problems in the second phase of rendezvous for UAV aerial refueling are studied. The function of aerial refueling initial point and aerial refueling control point(ARCP) is analyzed. The rendezvous trajectory by unmanned receiver and the tanker is researched. In order to solve the time synchronization issues by unmanned receiver and the tanker in the rendezvous, the concept of virtual targets and virtual tanker is put forward. The speed control problem of unmanned receiver and the tanker is studied. Then L1 nonlinear guidance algorithm is used to solve the tracking problem of U-shaped rail. In order to solve the problem of the position deviation at the end, a PI speed controller is studied to elimination the error at the end, which completes the rendezvous finally and get ready for next step of pre-contact.Finally, the simulation model of rendezvous in numerical simulation environment of MATLAB is established to verify the process of guidance algorithm. No wind condition and wind condition are both considered. Simulation results show that the tanker can track the U-shaped rail well by the L1 nonlinear guidance algorithm. The guidance law of receiver can synchronize the rendezvous well by unmanned receiver and the tanker.