EAAI Journal 2026 Journal Article
Intelligent attitude control of fighter aircraft at high angle of attack based on predefined-time observation and deep reinforcement learning
- Junjie Liu
- Yetong Lin
- Yuehui Ji
- Yu Song
- Qiang Gao
To address the challenges of low parameter tuning efficiency and insufficient disturbance rejection performance in traditional active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) under the highly nonlinear and strongly coupled dynamics of fighter aircraft at high angle of attack, this paper proposes an intelligent attitude control method that integrates deep reinforcement learning with predefined-time state observation. First, a predefined-time super-twisting extended state observer (PTSTESO) is designed within the ADRC framework to improve real-time estimation accuracy of total disturbances through a convergence mechanism that is independent of initial conditions. Then, a coordinated optimization framework based on a dual-enhanced twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm is developed. In this framework, the first agent employs a network structure combining gated recurrent unit (GRU) and a self attention (SA) mechanism to capture temporal dependencies and highlight critical features in the state sequence, thereby enabling adaptive and precise tuning of ADRC parameters. The second agent integrates prioritized experience replay (PER) and a novel action exploration strategy to improve sampling efficiency and learning performance, enabling effective control law optimization in the angle-of-attack channel. Simulation results show that the proposed method effectively reduces manual controller tuning effort and improves tracking accuracy and system robustness. Under a representative high-angle-of-attack maneuvering condition, the proposed method reduces the integral absolute error (IAE) and the integral time-weighted absolute error (ITAE) of angle-of-attack tracking by 96. 66% and 96. 71% compared with the conventional active disturbance rejection control, and by 94. 80% and 95. 06% compared with the modified active disturbance rejection control, respectively.