Adaptive Sliding Mode Relative Motion Control for Autonomous Carrier Landing of Fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In this paper, relative motion model and control strategy for autonomous fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) carrier landing are addressed. First, a coupled six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) non-linear relative motion model is established from 6-DOF UAV and carrier models. Second, because of the under-actuated characteristic of two vehicles, the 6-DOF relative motion model is simplified to a four-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) model to facilitate the control design. Third, an adaptive sliding mode control law is proposed to track desired landing trajectory and maintain constant relative pitch and roll angles. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.