A Feedback Linearizing Controller for Relative Guidance Between Commercial Aircraft

International audienceDuring the last few years, several concepts concerning the delegation to commercial aircraft flight crew of some tasks currently performed by the air traffic controllers have emerged [3]. Among these new ideas, relative guidance has appeared to be of some interest to contribute to the enhancement of air traffic capacity [1] though it rises hard technical challenges. Indeed, this kind of maneuver appears difficult to perform manually, and may induce an excessive increase of the flight crew workload, thus requiring a new on-board automated function, as suggested in [7]. This paper investigates the design of an autopilot mode dedicated to the trailing aircraft for merging and maintaining station keeping behind a leading aircraft. The investigated approach is based on feedback linearization control. We use a new form of relative position error which results in a singularity free stabilizing controller. Moreover, we take explicitly into account the separation between the two aircraft in order to safely manage the maneuver. Some properties of such a controller are also discussed on the basis of a case study including wind