Assessing Radar-Aided Navigation for UAM Approach and Landing Through High-Fidelity Simulations and Flight Testing

In Urban Air Mobility, the approach and landing procedure of Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft is recognized as a critical phase which needs innovative solutions to guarantee reliable operations. This paper focuses on validating an onboard multi-sensor architecture including a Frequency-Modulated-Continuous-Wave radar system, two cameras, a Global Navigation Satellite System receiver and an Inertial Measurement Unit. Data from exteroceptive sensors are processed to detect and identify ad-hoc designed keypoints in the landing area. In this framework, the paper discusses radar processing algorithms designed to detect and match the ground reflectors used as navigation aids. The resulting measurements are integrated in an Extended Kalman Filter. A physics-based simulation environment is adopted to realistically simulate the sensor data used to test performance of the navigation filter. Finally, an helicopter flight test campaign is presented with the aim to validate the simulation results on real flight data.