Landing of an Airliner Using Image Based Visual Servoing

In this paper, an image-based visual servoing scheme is presented in order to control a transport aircraft in final approach phase by overcoming the need for external information (e.g. ILS or GPS systems) and runway knowledge. Based on three decoupled visual features and inertial data, the guidance scheme is designed and validated on a simplified model and tested on a realistic nonlinear simulator. Finally simulation results are presented in order to validate the choice of the visual features and the guidance laws to land the aircraft.