Simulation and analysis of image-based navigation system for rotorcraft low-altitude flight

The automation of helicopter NOE flight entails the modification of nominal trajectories on the basis of the detection and location of obstacles by means of onboard sensors. This process is presently studied using a sequence of images from a passive sensor mounted at the helicopter's center of gravity and oriented with the viewing axis along the rotorcraft's longitudinal body-axis. Three different Kalman filters are used to estimate the location of an object on the ground during the course of various simulated helicopter maneuvers; two of the three filters are found to yield good object location estimates.