Automated Safety and Training Avionics for General Aviation Aircraft

摘要

The past decade has seen the U.S. general aviation community plagued bysubstantial cost increases while operating in an increasingly complex and crowded air traffic control structure. Unfortunately, there has been a corresponding rise in accident rates involving these aircraft. In an attempt to improve safety factors and training programs for this aviation sector, researchers at Texas AM University are investigating 'smart cockpit systems.' This research program is titled Automated Safety and Training Avionics (ASTRA). ASTRA research is focused on integrating low cost, yet sophisticated, computing technology into general aviation aircraft. The system architecture includes a Flight Mode Interpreter (FMI), which provides real time identification of the aircraft operational maneuvering mode, through interpretation by fuzzy logic of aircraft state variables. This inference controls a Head Up Display to automatically present a unique display format appropriate to the operational situation. The FMI also drives a rule based Pilot Advisor for generation of alarms and piloting advice. The pilot communicates with ASTRA through the Head-Down Display (HDD), which is configured similarly to the Multi-Function Displays found in many 'glass cockpit' aircraft. This configuration permits the pilot to readily access, edit, and display a wide variety of information.