Patent ID: 7305285

Claim:
A method of piloting an aircraft traveling on the ground, comprising automatically: a) determining an instruction to rotate the aircraft; b) determining a global moment having to be applied to the aircraft about the yaw axis so that said aircraft performs said rotation instruction; c) dividing said global moment into a sum of elementary moments, each of which corresponds to the effect generated on the aircraft respectively by one of a plurality of control surfaces, each of said control surfaces representing a particular section that is capable of acting on the yaw movement of the aircraft and which is controlled by at least one actuator; and d) for each of said control surfaces, computing an instruction to be applied to the actuator of the corresponding control surface such that the latter generates the associated elementary moment, wherein: the aircraft comprises, as control members, at least one control column and one steering wheel to steer the front landing gear of said aircraft, and in step a): an order generated by the control column is converted directly into a first yaw speed instruction; an order generated by the steering wheel is converted into an intermediate instruction of angle of orientation of the speed vector of the front landing gear, which is converted into a second yaw speed instruction; and said first and second yaw speed instructions are added together to obtain a global yaw speed which represents said instruction to rotate the aircraft.