Onboard assistance device for aiding the following of an airport route by an aircraft

An onboard assistance device for aiding the following of an airport route by an aircraft, said device comprising:

• a system of optical sensors which provides video images of said airport route;
• means providing the current position of the said aircraft;
• a database comprising the topological information for the airport on the airport route to be followed by the aircraft;
• a recognition system which provides, on the basis of the video images, data characteristic of the portion of the airport route seen by the system of optical sensors;
• a processing computer configured to:
• extract from the database, a succession of simple geometric shapes representing the stages of the airport route;
• construct primitives on the basis of the information received from the recognition system, a primitive comprising at least one simple geometric pattern representative of the route portion;
• compare said primitives with the simple geometric shapes representing the stages of the airport route extracted from the database;
• validate or invalidate the route followed by said aircraft as a function of the result of the comparison;
• and
• a viewing system comprising a viewing screen, said screen displaying a conformal view of the airport route situated in front of the aircraft and a succession of graphical symbols, each graphical symbol being associated with a geometric shape extracted from the database, the succession of symbols representing the stages of the airport route that are already recognized, the current stage, and the future stages.