The Influence of HDD Reference Frame and Path Prediction on Aircraft Taxi Performance
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Abstract
In order to increase the passenger handling rate at airports, landing and departure separations of aircraft are being minimised. During low visibility conditions, a bottleneck emerges in handling aircraft on the ground because of highly decreased taxi speeds. This causes increasing delays, aircraft having to fly extra holding patterns and eventually forces arriving aircraft to divert to other airports. This is becoming a great economical and environmental burden. Eagerness to solve this problem has resulted in world wide research on A-SMGCS systems. Such a system will enable pilots to safely navigate their aircraft at economical taxi speeds from strip to gate and back, under all visibility conditions. In an effort to develop a cost effective solution for such a system, taxi performance tests have been carried out using a fixed base simulator with the Primary Flight Display as only guiding instrument. Preliminary results show that the projection of either a 3D exo-centric or 3D ego-centric frame of reference combined with a path predictor, allows a significant increase in average taxi speed while maintaining an acceptable level of path following accuracy.