Aerial refueling rendezvous routes for UAVs based on nonlinear guide laws

Abstract

The route fusion rendezvous strategy is mostly used for air refueling within the safety zone, with fewer restrictions on the rendezvous airspace. There are fewer restrictions on the combined airspace. The refueling aircraft follows a set route, and the UAV gradually converges with the refueling aircraft by adjusting its own course. The UAVs gradually merge with the fueler’s route until they track the fueler to a certain distance behind the fueler and synchronize with the fueler’s status. The subsequent docking process is carried out. The fused route design is analogous to the use of missiles to track and strike moving targets. The unmanned aircraft are treated as pursuers moving at high speed. The fueling aircraft are treated as targets moving in a fixed pattern to be returned. The main objective of the convergent route design is to draw on and select appropriate guidance laws to bring the unmanned aircraft close to the fuel tanker. The main objective of the route fusion design is to use and select a suitable guidance law that allows unmanned aircraft to approach the fueling aircraft and achieve autonomous rendezvous. The traditional navigation laws are Pure Pursuit (PP) and Proportional Navigation (PP). The basic idea is to change the speed vector of a drone by varying its size. The difference is that the pure tracking guidance law requires the speed vector of the drone to coincide with the line of sight. In contrast, the example guidance law starts from the fact that the angular rate of rotation of the drone’s speed vector and the ratio guiding law is to keep the angular rate of rotation of the speed vector of the drone and that of the target in a fixed proportion.