Overview
Approaches, landings and take-offs, manoeuvres or navigation in the terminal zone, are among the most critical tasks in aircraft operation. At the time of this project, the only certified navigation system available for landings, ground rolls and take-offs are the ILS and MLS which require heavy airport infrastructures; recently, one can notice a trend towards the GNSS systems (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) which do not have the necessary integrity.
PEGASE contributed to the enhancement of the future 2012 Air Traffic Management. PEGASE promotes the development of Research and Innovation via the collaboration between highly skilled SMEs and Research Institutions.
The PEGASE project was a feasibility study of a new navigation system which allows a three dimensional (3D) truly autonomous approach and guidance for airports and helipads and improves the integrity and accuracy of GNSS differential navigation systems.
The main objectives of the study were:
- to assess the feasibility of the autonomous, all weather conditions, localisation and guidance system;
- to determine the performance required for the vision sensors (visual, infrared, electromagnetic) and the ground reference database in order to provide an accurate guidance from the final approach leg to full stop on the taxiway / helipad and for the take-off run from alignment up to the final take-off segment.
This new navigation system relied on three key technologies:
- specification of a reliable ground reference database;
- innovative correlation techniques between sensors outputs and onboard ground database;
- a robust servoing algorithm for the management of the trajectories of both fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft.
Two different threads of activity have been defined:
- how to create an onboard database safe and secure enough to allow the tracking and servoing;
- assuming we are able to build such a database, what would be the candidate algorithms that would allow the tracking and servoing to work?
Funding
Results
The study was carried out with existing simulation tools and man machine interface (MMI) developed for fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft.
The activity concerning the sensors was carried out by EADS and achieved the partners to have:
- a clear view of what are the requirements on the visual sensors when working for the landing / take-off functions;
- a clear view of the needs to develop new sensors and mainly a front line radar imaging system;
- a software package able to integrate in the shared simulation framework in order to create 'real' sensors using the image generator provided by Dassault Aviation.
The activity concerning the 'database' was led by ETHZ and had the following results:
- Work has been done, between ETHZ and Dassault Aviation, to reorganise the planning and the related activities in order to answer the alert raised during the first year.
- Walphot SA, helped by Dassault Aviation, completed the work done upon the state of the art of the existing data sources to take into account the emerging satellite systems to come in the following years. The obtained data has been used but is an achievement on itself and could be provided for other purposes.
- ETHZ provided to ELPHO the fusion algorithm to be implemented in a commonly agreed geographical tool (ARCGIS). This algorithm has been thoroughly tested and developed on real data.
- ETHZ worked on the quality assessment of database introducing local measures such as roughness. First insights now exist that could lead to proposal towards certification world through EUROCAE working group.
- ETHZ elaborated a methodology to be further developed in order to automatically extract edges, leading to automatic buildings identification.
- Dassault Aviation promoted a new way to approximate terrain data using Brownian motion. This approach, though at its research step, could lead to more accurate way to assess quality and manage accuracy of interpolated terrain data. This is an ongoing work.
- The first assessment framework has been defined between the partners concerned during this period (ETHZ as leader, Dassault Aviation and Walphot). It should be used throughout the last period.
The activity concerning 'visual tracking and servoing' was led by INRIA and had the following results:
- Runway/helipad detection: image processing algorithms have been developed by CNIT for the detection of a runway or a helipad in the im