Finite-Time Disturbance Reconstruction and ADP-Assisted Attitude Regulation for Aerial-Refueling Receiver Aircraft

This paper investigates the attitude control problem of an aerial-refueling receiver aircraft subject to tanker-wake disturbances, atmospheric gusts, aerodynamic uncertainties, and inertia perturbations. To simultaneously improve transient performance, disturbance-rejection capability, and control efficiency, a prescribed-performance adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) framework is developed. First, a finite-time performance envelope is introduced to explicitly constrain the attitude response and guarantee that the prescribed performance boundary reaches its steady-state value within a finite time. Then, a high-precision finite-time disturbance observer, incorporating a finite-time differentiator, is constructed to reconstruct the lumped disturbance acting on the receiver aircraft. Based on the disturbance-compensated system, an ADP-based auxiliary policy is combined with a nonlinear damping term to coordinate transient regulation and control-effort optimization. Theoretical analysis establishes finite-time disturbance reconstruction and local uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop signals under an explicitly stated input-to-state stability condition. Comparative simulations against a classical ADP controller and a robust finite-time controller demonstrate that the proposed method achieves smoother transient responses and a favorable balance between attitude regulation and control effort. Hardware-in-the-loop experiments on a three-axis turntable platform further verify the real-time implementability and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.