An aircraft is disclosed including a ground manoeuvre control unit for automatically controlling ground manoeuvres. The aircraft has control mechanisms such as a rudder, nose wheel steering, spoilers, wheel brakes and the like for controlling motion of the aircraft. The control unit is configured to receive lateral input demands concerning lateral motion of the aircraft (e.g. heading control) and longitudinal input demands concerning longitudinal motion of the aircraft (e.g. deceleration). The control unit passes on the input demands as output demands to the relevant control mechanisms of the aircraft with, if so required, a modification which prioritises one of the lateral input demand and longitudinal input demand based on the risk of a lateral runway excursion and the risk of a longitudinal runway excursion.

A method for assisting an aircraft in landing on a runway and an associated system includes determining a target exit point from the runway and a target taxi speed at which the aircraft has to take the target exit; calculating a target ground distance representative of a ground deceleration phase; and calculating the position of a target touchdown point on the basis of the target ground distance. The target ground distance is calculated as a function of a target deceleration profile for the aircraft to reach the target exit point at the target taxi speed.

An integrated guidance and feedback control scheme for steering an underactuated vehicle through desired waypoints in three-dimensional space. The guidance and control algorithm takes as an input the desired trajectory for the translational motion that passes through the given waypoints, and autonomously generates the desired trajectory for the attitude based on the desired thrust direction to achieve the translational motion trajectory. A feedback control law is obtained to steer the underactuated vehicle towards the desired trajectories in translation and rotation.

A navigation system for an aircraft includes a light source, a light sensor, one or more processors, and a computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the navigation system to perform functions. The functions include illuminating a surface using the light source to cause light to be reflected from the surface and detecting the light and generating data representing the light using the light sensor. The data maps intensities of the light to respective positions on the surface. The functions further include identifying within the data a subset of the data that corresponds to a border and causing navigation of the aircraft based on a position of the border indicated by the subset of the data.

In an aspect, a system for propeller parking control for an electric aircraft. The system include at least a sensor and a computing device. A sensor may be configured to generate angular datum. The computing device may be configured to generate a trajectory as a function of angular datum. The computing device may also be configured to initiate the transition from hover to fixed-wing flight as a function of a trajectory.

A navigation system for an aircraft includes a light source, a light sensor, one or more processors, and a computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the navigation system to perform functions. The functions include illuminating a surface using the light source to cause light to be reflected from the surface and detecting the light and generating data representing the light using the light sensor. The data maps intensities of the light to respective positions on the surface. The functions further include identifying within the data a subset of the data that corresponds to a border and causing navigation of the aircraft based on a position of the border indicated by the subset of the data.

A system for flight control configured for use in an electric aircraft includes an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and configured to detect an aircraft angle and an aircraft angle rate. The system includes a flight controller including an outer loop controller configured to receive the input datum from the sensor, receive the aircraft angle from the IMU, and generate a rate setpoint as a function of the input datum. The system includes an inner loop controller configured to receive the aircraft angle rate, receive the rate setpoint from the outer loop controller, and generate a moment datum as a function of the rate setpoint. The system includes a mixer configured to receive the moment datum, perform a torque allocation as a function of the moment datum, and generate a motor command datum as a function of the torque allocation.

Provided is a device including an acquisition unit that acquires information indicating a position estimation system selected from among a plurality of position estimation systems for estimating a position of a flight vehicle, and a position estimation unit that estimates the position of the flight vehicle from first information generated by using an inertial sensor of the flight vehicle and second information generated through the position estimation system based on a parameter for the position estimation system.

Embodiments of the present invention relate to a method of controlling an aircraft and a flight control device for an aircraft, an aircraft with such flight control device and a storage medium. The method includes: determining a flight mode adopted by the aircraft in a non-static state; if the flight mode is an absolute hovering mode, determining a target speed of the aircraft according to a current flight speed, a current flight height and a first preset hovering height of the aircraft and a remote control speed set for the aircraft by remote control device; if the flight mode is a relative static hovering mode, determining the target speed of the aircraft according to a relative flight speed, the current flight height, a second preset switching hovering height and the remote control speed; and controlling the aircraft to fly according to the target speed.

An object classification system may be present on a vehicle with a computing device connected to a sensor mounted on the vehicle. In response to an object positioned in a field of view of the sensor, the computing device may determine a state of the object after calculating a relative shape stability value for the object over time. The computing device may then deviate from a predetermined route for the vehicle in response to a classification of the object as a dynamic state.