Autonomous Landing for Unmanned Seaplanes

Autonomous landing for unmanned seaplanes in complex sea conditions has been a challenge for along time. Seaplanes have become one of the key areas of development in the design and use of our aircraft due to their unique usage characteristics. This paper presents a new autonomous landing system for unmanned seaplanes based on Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC). The controller is divided into longitudinal speed control subsystem and attitude control subsystem, the speed control subsystem is composed of the ADRC control and throttle switch modules, and the attitude subsystem is composed of the pitch angle ADRC controller and the altitude PID controller. Simulations are performed in irregular waves. Simulation results show that the proposed control system can successfully land the unmanned seaplane with satisfactory performance.