A fully automated towing, alignment and hangar system suitable for an offshore operation helicopter includes a quick mooring device, a wide-angle camera installed on a rear wall of the quick mooring device, a longitudinal towing device, a DSP control unit, an MCU control unit, a helicopter and a mooring bar thereof. An alignment method based on above system includes following steps of acquiring an attitude image of a steering wheel, calculating a helicopter yaw angle and a steering wheel deflection angle, calculating position coordinates of the steering wheel, a first wheel and a second wheel in a deck coordinate system, judging boundaries relative to a towing indication line, extracting an optimal path suitable for the movement of the helicopter, calculating lateral and longitudinal movement position control commands, driving the movement of the helicopter, and repeating the above operations until the automated towing, alignment and hangar are completed. The method provided by the present disclosure does not need human intervention in the whole process, and thereby reducing operation difficulty, improving transshipment efficiency, and ensuring the safety of auxiliary personnel and equipment on the ship, and having an important practical value in the fields of ships, military industry and the like.

A beacon unit (2) configured to generate a virtual point (TP) which is moveable along a virtual trajectory (TR), from one or more data item(s) of a kinematics of the aircraft (AC). The device includes a control unit (4) configured to generate an order to move the aircraft towards a dynamic point (TP) and thus along the target trajectory (TR).

The present invention provides a method for maneuvering and aligning aircraft equipped and driven during ramp ground travel with landing gear wheel-mounted electric taxi drive systems that have deviated from taxi line travel paths and for maneuvering the electric taxi drive system-driven aircraft to park accurately to align with locations of parking stops when the aircraft nose landing gear wheels stop beyond or short of a parking stop. The aircraft pilot can, without waiting for a tug or starting aircraft engines, precisely maneuver the aircraft with the electric taxi drive systems while viewing the taxi line and parking stop location in real time with an optional camera and sensor system while maneuvering the aircraft in forward or reverse and lateral directions to align the aircraft nose wheels with the taxi line path and to accurately position the nose landing gear wheels at the parking stop.

In various examples, live perception from sensors of a vehicle may be leveraged to generate potential paths for the vehicle to navigate an intersection in real-time or near real-time. For example, a deep neural network (DNN) may be trained to compute various outputssuch as heat maps corresponding to key points associated with the intersection, vector fields corresponding to directionality, heading, and offsets with respect to lanes, intensity maps corresponding to widths of lanes, and/or classifications corresponding to line segments of the intersection. The outputs may be decoded and/or otherwise post-processed to reconstruct an intersectionor key points corresponding theretoand to determine proposed or potential paths for navigating the vehicle through the intersection.

In various examples, live perception from sensors of a vehicle may be leveraged to generate potential paths for the vehicle to navigate an intersection in real-time or near real-time. For example, a deep neural network (DNN) may be trained to compute various outputssuch as heat maps corresponding to key points associated with the intersection, vector fields corresponding to directionality, heading, and offsets with respect to lanes, intensity maps corresponding to widths of lanes, and/or classifications corresponding to line segments of the intersection. The outputs may be decoded and/or otherwise post-processed to reconstruct an intersectionor key points corresponding theretoand to determine proposed or potential paths for navigating the vehicle through the intersection.

A device is for assisting the piloting in acceleration of an aircraft in taking in order to control its speed. The comprises a control member, adapted to be actuated by a pilot from a neutral position to define a taxiing piloting command for controlling the speed of the aircraft and a central controller, adapted to operate pilot at least one engine of the aircraft to apply the taxiing command defined by the pilot. The taxiing piloting command is an acceleration or deceleration command of the aircraft during taxiing.

An event recognition system includes one or more processing circuits including one or more memory devices and one or more processors. The one or more memory devices are configured to store instructions thereon that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: execute an algorithm that receives image data as an input and recognizes a first equipment object and a second equipment object in the image data; recognize an event involving the first equipment object and the second equipment object based upon the image data containing the recognized first equipment object and the recognized second equipment object; and execute an event procedure based upon the event where the event procedure includes controlling the first equipment object.

An apparatus for alerting an operator to the presence of obstacles during the towing or push-back of an aircraft while it is on the ground, including: a self-propelled platform; at least one sensor attached to said platform, configured to sense potential obstacles; and a communication system attached to said platform for transmitting data relating to said sensed obstacles, the communication system being operable to communicate with at least one of: a same said apparatus; an operator control panel; a command centre; the aircraft being towed or pushed-back; and a vehicle towing or pushing-back the aircraft. An aircraft collision avoidance system is used during towing or push-back of an aircraft while it is on the ground, the system includes: at least one apparatus as described; and a carrier configured to carry the at least one apparatus.

An aircraft tow vehicle comprises a turntable lifting unit configured to automatically rotate and lift for attachment to a nose landing gear of an aircraft. A gate coupled to the turntable lifting unit automatically unlocks, opens to receive the nose landing gear, closes to secure the nose landing gear, and locks. A sensor system detects the nose landing gear. A controller receives data from the sensor system, processes the data to determine a position of the nose landing gear, and controls the turntable lifting unit while automatically adjusting a position of the tow vehicle relative to the nose landing gear. A moving floor adjusts to accommodate different nose wheel sizes. A nose wheel adapter automatically positions itself to hold down the nose landing gear when weight is detected on the moving floor.

An aircraft tow vehicle comprises a turntable lifting unit configured to automatically rotate and lift for attachment to a nose landing gear of an aircraft. A gate coupled to the turntable lifting unit automatically unlocks, opens to receive the nose landing gear, closes to secure the nose landing gear, and locks. A sensor system detects the nose landing gear. A controller receives data from the sensor system, processes the data to determine a position of the nose landing gear, and controls the turntable lifting unit while automatically adjusting a position of the tow vehicle relative to the nose landing gear. A moving floor adjusts to accommodate different nose wheel sizes. A nose wheel adapter automatically positions itself to hold down the nose landing gear when weight is detected on the moving floor.