Runway Relative Positioning of Aircraft with IMU-Camera Data Fusion

In this article the challenge of providing precise runway relative position and orientation reference to a landing aircraft based-on monocular camera and inertial sensor data is targeted in frame of the VISION EU H2020 research project. The sensors provide image positions of the corners of the runway and the so-called vanishing point and measured angular rate and acceleration of the aircraft. Measured data is fused with an Extended Kalman Filter considering measurement noise and possible biases. The developed method was tested off-line with computer simulated data from simulation of the aircraft and the processing of artificial images. This way the image generated noise and the uncertainties in image processing are considered realistically. Inertial sensor noises and biases are generated artificially in the simulation. A large set of simulation cases was tested. The results are promising so completing instrumental landing system and GPS with the estimates can be a next step of development. Copyright (C) 2019. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.