A fuzzy adaptive drogue control method in autonomous aerial refueling

In the autonomous aerial refueling mission, the drogue is greatly influenced by the refueling hose and complex flow field, which makes it extremely difficult to control. To solve this problem, firstly, we focus on the restraining effect of the bending recovery moment and tension moment of the refueling hose on the attitude of the drogue, and a complete recursive dynamics model of the refueling hose-controlled drogue is established. Then, taking the position of the drogue as the control object, a fuzzy adaptive control method of the drogue trajectory is designed, and the adaptive updating fuzzy model is used to approximate the influence of the refueling hose and the complex flow field. Meanwhile, the adaptive error estimation technique is introduced to compensate the error of fuzzy approximation. Finally, the numerical simulation results verify that the method can effectively suppress the influence of hose and flow field and realize the drogue trajectory maneuver control.