Design of automatic docking controller based on probe and drogue aerial refueling

In the process of probe and drogue aerial refueling, the docking and refueling stage have the highest requirements for precision, safety and efficiency, and the control is extremely difficult, which is an important part of the design of automatic air refueling flight control system. This paper studies how to control the receiver to achieve close-range accurate air docking control after the receiver completes the rendezvous with the tanker and reaches the close-range formation position below the side and back of the tanker. In this paper, the reference observer based tracking controller (ROTC) method is used to design the docking controller of the receiver. According to the relative position between the receiver and the tanker measured by the sensor, the ideal state information and control information that the receiver needs to track are estimated by the reference observer, and then the flight control system of the receiver is designed by the full state feedback to realize the docking and refueling maintenance between the receiver probe and the refueling drogue.