A landmark-based navigation method for autonomous aircraft

Due to the influences of many factors, the aircraft always deviates from the planned path during the process of actual flying. A landmark-based navigation technique is presented to reduce the flight path error and improve navigation precision of aircraft. The method refers to appropriate landmark selection based on the planned path and the view field of imaging, position estimation of aircraft based on the position recognition of landmark and flight parameters, and the flight path correction by comparing with the planned flight path. The robustness of the proposed method is demonstrated with the test data takes different levels of error on pitch by experiments. (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.