Adaptive Algorithm for Fixed Wing UAV Autolanding on Aircraft Carrier

Abstract

Ruby M., Salbego N. French Air Force AcademyThis paper presents an adaptive algorithm for autolanding of a fixed wing UAV on an aircraft carrier. The algorithm is characterized by the specific feature of implementing suitable adaptivity in order to improve the ability of a UAV in performing the automatic landing on a moving runway, such as an aircraft carrier. Furthermore, in order to consider the specific requirements and constraints associated to the autonomous approach and landing of a UAV on an aircraft carrier, the algorithm properly takes into account the procedures typically used by Navy's pilot to land on the aircraft carrier. The paper is structured into several paragraphs describing both the proposed algorithm and its numerical validation results. More in details, in the paper first a summary state-of-the-art of autolanding algorithms is outlined, then the overall Guidance, Navigation and Control system architecture, where the autolanding algorithm is integrated, is introduced and the proposed algorithm is described. The design philosophy is illustrated, which is based on the consideration of the autolanding trajectory generation problem according to two stages: the plan of a nominal trajectory applicable to the ideal case and the periodical regeneration, real time during the mission, of a new trajectory, according to the current state of both vehicle and carrier. In the second part of the paper, finally, the synthetic environment used for the numerical validation of the proposed algorithm is described and the results of the validation campaign are reported and commented, showing the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm even in presence of external disturbances.

Online Motion Planning for Fixed-Wing Aircraft in Precise Automatic Landing on Mobile Platforms

“…The aircraft can arrive at a target point as long as the point is within reach of an unpowered glide. An adaptive algorithm for fixed-wing UAV autolanding on an aircraft carrier was presented in [24], but the adjustment was limited to the vertical plane. Thus, the speed constraint still cannot be addressed effectively.…”

Distributed control for coordinated tracking of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles subject to velocity constraints

“…1–3 In particular, coordinated tracking is one of the most important applications, which means that a group of UAVs track a target in a predefined formation. The target here can be appointed as many objects, such as aircraft in the hybrid formation, 4 a recovery device in the process of air-recovery of UAV swarm, 5 and even a dynamic leader in the virtual structure of swarm. 6…”

“…[1][2][3] In particular, coordinated tracking is one of the most important applications, which means that a group of UAVs track a target in a predefined formation. The target here can be appointed as many objects, such as aircraft in the hybrid formation, 4 a recovery device in the process of air-recovery of UAV swarm, 5 and even a dynamic leader in the virtual structure of swarm. 6 A number of control algorithms have been proposed to achieve the coordinated tracking, including the leaderfollower approach, 7,8 virtual structure approach, 9 consensus-based approach, 10,11 and behavioral approach.…”

Distributed Control for Coordinated Tracking of Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles under Model Uncertainty and Disturbances

“…In recent years, cooperative tracking control of multi-UAVs has been developing rapidly for its wide application [1,2], such as pursuing recovery device in air-recovery [3], following aircraft in a cooperative operation [4] and tracking virtual leader in formation flight [5]. However, there exist many challenges in the research [2].…”