Enhanced Pigeon-Inspired Optimization-Based Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Carrier-Based Aircraft Landing Direct Lift Control

Carrier-based aircraft landing is a critical element in generating aircraft carrier combat capability. Traditional landing control suffers from inherent drawbacks including strong trajectory–attitude coupling, high pilot workload, and insufficient disturbance rejection in complex environments. The MAGIC CARPET precision landing technology achieves decoupled manipulation via direct lift control, providing a feasible technical path to address these bottlenecks. However, existing schemes still have limitations in multi-channel dynamic decoupling performance and controller parameter tuning efficiency. This paper designs a three-channel (flap, stabilator, throttle) active disturbance rejection control landing system based on direct lift technology, with an adaptive decoupling module introduced to counteract the pitching moment coupling caused by flap deflection, so as to maintain stable attitude and velocity during trajectory adjustment. An enhanced pigeon-inspired optimization algorithm is proposed with full-process improvements in population initialization, global search operator and local search operator, and a global collaborative tuning scheme for controller parameters is constructed. Verified by multiple groups of comparative simulations and Monte Carlo statistical experiments, the proposed system outperforms comparative schemes in tracking accuracy, decoupling effect and disturbance suppression capability, and exhibits favorable robust stability under uncertain conditions. This study offers a useful reference for the design and practical implementation of direct-lift landing control systems for carrier-based aircraft.