Three Dimensional Path Planning and Guidance for Aerial Refueling of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

In this thesis, a rendezvous path planning is considered for a UAV (Un-manned Aerial Vehicle). The objective of the path planning is to make the tanker and the UAV perform rendezvous at a pre-planned point, and then the UAV should maintain the same speed with the tanker to accomplish aerial refueling mission. Since the aerial refueling mission is generally per-formed between one tanker and multiple aircraft, setting the pre-planned point for the rendezvous will be efficient in the operation management level. In this study, rendezvous path planning and guidance law are pro-posed such that the UAV can be prevented from turning sharply while minimizing an energy consumption. Numerical simulations are performed for rendezvous and aerial refueling mission to demonstrate the perfor-mance of the proposed path planning and guidance law.