Autonomous docking of passenger aircraft e.g. with passenger entry ramp, deck of aircraft-carrier

摘要

The method employs a range-imaging camera (1) to generate raw data for evaluation by an integrated microprocessor (2). A programmable read-only memory (3) holds software for recognition and position measurement of the aircraft's nosecone. An external interface (4) allows communication at a low data rate with an external computer. The field of view of the camera is fixed and the nose position is located by Hough transform allowing a predetermined imprecision in at least one co-ordinate direction to compensate for statistical inaccuracies in the measurements.