Rotorcraft Deceleration to Hover Using Image-based Guidance

Rotorcraft operating im hostile environment fly at low altitudes to minimise the exposure to the defensive weapons arrayed against them. The development of intelligent guidance commands at low altitudes requires the integration of conventional guidance with the information provided by the sensor on relative position between the vehicle and local terrain or obstacles. Deceleration to hover(DTH) is one of the common maneuvers executed by a rotorcraft. This paper describes the integration of a DTH guidance logic with an image-based scheme to estimate the hover point. The performance of such a system is affected by parameters of the guidance and by navigation and image processing algorithms. Results are presented on the effect of these parameters on system performance.