Experimental Analysis of Advanced Control and Estimation Systems for Autonomous Ship Landing

The U.S. Navy Sea-Based Aviation program has identified autonomous ship launch and recovery(L&R) as a desired future capability for both manned and unmanned sea-based rotorcraft. Ifpossible, this capability should be achieved in a wide range of adverse operating conditions whileminimizing the radiation of detectable signals and avoiding reliance on the Global PositioningSystem (GPS) or other external navigation aids. Designing an autonomous landing system that canreliably operate in adverse environmental conditions is particularly challenging due to the largeship deck motions in high sea state, turbulent unsteady flow fields over the landing deck, andobscuration of visual landing aids due to sea spray, fog, and deck motions.