Device for assisting the taxing process of an airplane

The general field of the invention is that of on-board assistance devices for following an airport route by an aircraft, said device comprising: - an on-board optical sensor system (1); - means (2) providing the current position of said aircraft; - a database (3) comprising the topological information of the airport; - a recognition system (4) providing, from the video images from the optical sensor system, data characteristic of the portion of the airport route, making it possible to identify a simple "primitive" representative of the portion of the route followed; - a processing computer (5) arranged so as to o extract from the database a succession of simple geometric shapes representing the airport route and of the same nature as the "primitives" from the recognition system; o compare them to said "primitives"; o validate or invalidate the route followed by said aircraft depending on the result of the comparison.