Flight Guidance for Vision-Augmented Automatic Landing of Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing Vehicles

Abstract

The rising interest in urban air mobility and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles brings both new possibilities and challenges to the aviation industry. To increase efficiency and reduce costs for urban air mobility operations, the aircraft will operate in a highly automated environment. In this paper, we present an experimental flight guidance system developed for conducting flight tests with a prototype eVTOL vehicle. The flight guidance logic compromises three hierarchical levels and processes input data from an external tactical collision avoidance system and a vision-based integrity monitor, which ensures that performance-based navigation requirements are satisfied. The trajectory selection module finds an energy-optimal path via pre-defined trajectories during flight. The presented system is developed according to an in-house requirements- and model-based process.