a b s t r a c tCurrently, most aircraft have an automatic landing system (ALS) installed. In normal flight conditions, an aircraft automatic landing system can significantly reduce the pilot's workload. Conventional automatic landing systems are designed by the use of gain scheduling or traditional adaptive control techniques; once the flight conditions or wind disturbance intensity is beyond the limits of the system, the pilot must turn off the automatic landing system and manually take over the aircraft landing procedures. The purpose of this study is to integrate the cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) and the sliding mode control (SMC) into the aircraft landing system. Genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and chaotic particle swarm optimization (CPSO) are used to adjust the parameters of the sliding mode control. The proposed intelligent control system can not only effectively improve the landing system to counter wind disturbance, but also help the pilots guide the aircraft to a safe landing in difficult environments. In addition, Lyapunov theory is applied to derive adaptive learning rules for the control system. Furthermore, the TI C6713 rapid property is utilized to develop an embedded control system for a digital signal processing (DSP) controller. The realization of on-line real-time control can thereby be achieved.