Nonlinear image-based visual servo controller for automatic landing guidance of a fixed-wing aircraft

This paper describes a nonlinear Image-Based Visual Servo controller for automatic landing of a fixed wing aircraft in presence of a wind gust. Only 2D image features are exploited from the image of the runway to perform a typical path for landing maneuver (alignment, glide and flare maneuvers). The visual measurements for the alignment are the two lines delimitating the runway using the so-called bi-normalised Plücker Coordinates parametrisation. For the glide and flare maneuvers, additional 2D features such as the coordinates of the first two corners (or some specific markers) of runway are used. The controller is unique for the alignment and the glide maneuver; it exploits the full nonlinear dynamics of the airplane guidance problem to derive a control Lyapunov function along with an estimate of the wind gust. Finally simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the control approach.