Automatic Landing for Carrier-Based Aircraft Under the Conditions of Deck Motion and Carrier Airwake Disturbances

Abstract

This article studies the automatic landing problem for the carrier-based aircraft in the presence of deck motion and carrier airwake disturbance. First, an automatic regressive model based prediction algorithm is proposed to generate the motion information of the deck, which in turn is used to generate corrections in the commands of the aircraft's heading and flight path to guarantee landing accuracy. Then, a fast fixed-time stable system (FFSS) is proposed. Based on the FFSS, the sliding-mode-based command differentiators are designed to estimate the first-order derivatives of the reference commands in finite time. Moreover, using the modified reaching law, the incremental sliding mode control (ISMC) is presented to design the landing guidance and control system to provide fast and accurate flight control to touchdown, where the airwake disturbances are compensated by the designed adaptive super twisting extended state observers (ASTESOs). Besides, to improve the stability during the final approach, an approach power compensation subsystem maintaining the angle of attack is proposed using the ISMC and ASTESO. The stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed using the Lyapunov theorem. Finally, comparative simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme over state-of-the-art methods on the landing accuracy and robustness.