A microburst is a local, intense downdraft which induces an outburst of damaging winds near the ground which extends 4 km or less. Microbursts are of interest to researchers because of the strong, occasionally damaging surface winds they produce, and the hazardous wind patterns they create for aircraft in the landing or takeoff phases of flight. The dynamics and aircraft hazards posed by an iso...

In this paper, we explore the challenging and important problem of automated aircraft landing. We created a simulator to be able to perform online experiments in various conditions including stormy weather and starting from off-trajectory starting points. We experiment with a wide range of techniques to learn the optimal flight policy including reinforcement learning, Monte Carlo based dynamic ...

Generalization by the Neural Networks is an added advantage that can provide very good robustness and disturbance rejection properties. By providing a sufficient number of training samples (inputs and their corresponding outputs), a network can deal with some inputs it has never seen before. This ability makes them very interesting for control applications because not only they can learn compli...

The characteristics of a dynamic implementation of the single-runway aircraft landing problem were analysed using some well-known datasets. Given the nature and degree of complexity of this problem, a specific hybrid algorithm was developed, consisting of a stochastic and a deterministic element. The deterministic scheduler divides the aircraft into logical landing sequences as part of the recu...

Over the past few decades, air traffic has experienced a tremendous Growth. However, as the air traffic develops, the limitation of the runway becomes the bottleneck during the airport operation and scheduling aircraft landing present a complex daily task encountered by most air traffic control towers. In this paper, we study the Multiple Runway case of the Aircraft Landing Problem (MRALP), whi...

This paper presents a motion tracking and control system for automatically landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) on an oscillating platform using Laser Radar (LADAR) observations. The system itself is assumed to be mounted on a ship deck. A full nonlinear mathematical model is first introduced for the UAV. The ship motion is characterized by a Fourier transform based method which includes a r...

Aircraft landing using the Global Positioning System (GPS) in equatorial regions is more difficult than in other regions because ionospheric scintillation is prevalent. Ionospheric scintillation causes amplitude fades of 20 dB or more and an increase in the phase jitter. This research evaluates techniques to enhance a GPS receiver for overcoming ionospheric scintillation. To validate the design...

This paper presents a neural-aided controller that enhances the fault tolerant capabilities of a high performance fighter aircraft during the landing phase when subjected to severe winds and failures such as stuck control surfaces. The controller architecture uses a neural controller aiding an existing conventional controller. The neural controller uses a feedback error learning mechanism and e...

| Evolutionary approaches are not usually considered for real time scheduling problems due to long computation times and uncertainty about the length of the computation time. We argue that for some kinds of problems, such as optimizing aircraft landing times, genetic algorithms have advantages over other methods as a best solution is always available when needed, and, since the computation is i...

Objective: This study aims at investigating helicopter pilots’ strategies to achieve ship deck landing.Background: Helicopter maritime operations are challenging, especially when it comes landing on the moving decks of small ships, such as frigates, which can lead dramatic accidents.Method: Expert pilots were requested fly full maneuver from approach touchdown in an immersive simulator. Two sea...