Predefined-Time Attitude Stabilization of Receiver Aircraft in Aerial Refueling

This brief addresses the challenging problem of predefined-time attitude stabilization of receiver aircraft with uncertain inertia and unknown external disturbance. A sliding manifold is first designed to ensure that the sliding mode phase can be achieved in the predefined time. After that, a robust stabilization controller is developed to guarantee that attitude error falls into a small neighbourhood containing the origin with predefined-time convergence. In comparison with the conventional fixed-time and the finite-time control strategies, the key feature of this scheme is that system settling time can be arbitrarily and explicitly chosen in advance and independent of system states. Moreover, some modifications to the existing predefined-time stable system are achieved, meanwhile, the practical predefined-time stability with rigorous proof is derived. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.