Design method and device for universal airborne controller software
By designing a universal airborne controller software framework, the problem of software portability between different civil aircraft projects was solved, realizing the unification and rapid configuration of controller software, improving design efficiency and reducing costs.
Patent Information
- Authority / Receiving Office
- CN · China
- Patent Type
- Applications(China)
- Current Assignee / Owner
- Filing Date
- 2025-12-03
- Publication Date
- 2026-03-24
AI Technical Summary
Existing airborne controller software designs are difficult to port across different civil aircraft projects, leading to redundant design and high costs. Furthermore, the controller software is tightly bound to the underlying state, resulting in low design efficiency.
By adopting a general airborne controller software framework design method, and by generating configuration files and general controller modules, defining the driver layer and application layer, the controller software is unified and universalized, adapting to the functional requirements of different controller devices.
It enables rapid porting and flexible configuration of controller software, reduces development costs and time, improves design efficiency, and adapts to various application scenarios.
Smart Images

Figure CN121722362A_ABST
Abstract
Description
Technical Field
[0001] This invention belongs to the field of software engineering and relates to a design method and apparatus for general airborne controller software. Background Technology
[0002] The display and control system in avionics provides pilots with a range of flight information, including flight data and status. Pilots can also interact with the display and control system through onboard controller equipment. The onboard controller equipment includes a series of physical sensors, such as switches, knobs, and buttons. By recognizing these physical sensors, messages are generated and interacted with the display and control system, enabling operations such as switching the displayed screen and changing the displayed data. Currently, onboard controllers are widely used in various civil aircraft projects. However, the design of the controller software is too tightly coupled with the project requirements. Porting the controller software from one civil aircraft project to another requires a significant amount of manpower and time.
[0003] Reflected in 1) The physical sensors of each controller device are different. For example, the display controller includes page switching buttons, data range adjustment knobs, etc.; the cursor controller includes light adjustment buttons, multi-function switches, etc. A complete display control system usually requires up to seven or eight types of controllers to support the complete interaction of display control functions. Therefore, it is necessary to design the recognition of physical sensors for each type of controller separately.
[0004] 2) The controller software corresponds to different underlying states in different projects. Underlying states refer to different chips, different ports, different data communication formats, etc. If the underlying states differ, the design of the software layer's underlying interfaces will also vary from project to project. The design of the underlying interfaces typically includes chip port identification and reading processing, physical address acquisition and identification, message protocol determination and design, etc.
[0005] As described above, when faced with new display and control projects, the design of controller software always involves repeatedly solving the same problems. If these two points could be unified and generalized, and the design of controller software could be integrated and professionalized to form a universal controller software design framework, it would undoubtedly greatly improve software design efficiency and reduce design manpower and time. Summary of the Invention
[0006] This invention provides a design method and apparatus for universal airborne controller software, solving the problem of the difficulty in porting existing airborne controllers.
[0007] The first invention provides a design method for a general airborne controller system software framework, comprising: Based on the number N of controllers in the target airborne controller system, an airborne controller system software framework is generated, which includes N general-purpose controllers; N is a positive integer. Based on the functions of the N controllers in the target airborne controller system, generate configuration files for N general controllers and place them into the general controller of the airborne controller system software framework.
[0008] Optionally, the functional points of a general-purpose controller shall include at least: buttons, knobs, switches, and message sending; The configuration file contains the corresponding controller's property values.
[0009] Optionally, based on the functions of the N controllers of the target airborne controller system, generate configuration files for N general controllers, including: Based on the interface control documentation of the target airborne controller system, generate configuration files for N general-purpose controllers.
[0010] Optionally, the configuration file is a .c file, and the method further includes: Compile the configuration file and the general controller module together.
[0011] Optionally, the general components of the airborne controller system software framework include: a driver layer and an application layer; The configuration file is placed in the application layer of the general controller in the airborne controller system software framework.
[0012] A second aspect of the present invention provides a design apparatus for a universal airborne controller system software framework, comprising: The framework generation gate is used to generate the airborne controller system software framework based on the number N of controllers in the target airborne controller system. The airborne controller system software framework includes N general controllers; the value of N is a positive integer. The configuration file generation module is used to generate configuration files for N general controllers based on the functions of the N controllers in the target airborne controller system, and then put them into the general controller of the airborne controller system software framework.
[0013] Optionally, the functional points of a general-purpose controller shall include at least: buttons, knobs, switches, and message sending; The configuration file contains the corresponding controller's property values.
[0014] Optionally, the configuration file generation module is specifically used to generate configuration files for N general controllers based on the interface control documents of the target airborne controller system.
[0015] Optionally, the configuration file is a .c file, and the configuration file generation module is also used to compile the configuration file and the general controller module together.
[0016] Optionally, the general components of the airborne controller system software framework include: a driver layer and an application layer; The configuration file is placed in the application layer of the general controller in the airborne controller system software framework.
[0017] The beneficial effects of this invention are as follows: This invention proposes a design method and apparatus for universal airborne controller software. The software design framework defined in this invention can be freely adapted to different controller devices, meeting the application requirements of any controller software and applicable to a wide range of scenarios. The software design framework defined in this invention is flexibly configurable, saving costs, reducing development time, and alleviating workload. This invention is simple to design, easy to implement, and has good engineering applicability. Attached Figure Description
[0018] To more clearly illustrate the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention or the prior art, the drawings used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art will be briefly introduced below. The drawings described below are only some embodiments of the present invention. For those skilled in the art, other drawings can be obtained based on these drawings without creative effort.
[0019] Figure 1 Design a software layer framework diagram; Figure 2 Design framework diagram for underlying data extraction software; Figure 3 Design framework for general airborne controller software; Figure 4 A modular diagram of the software framework for a general-purpose airborne controller; Figure 5 Tool diagram for generating configuration files for the controller; Figure 6 This is a diagram of a general-purpose controller module. Detailed Implementation
[0020] To make the objectives, technical solutions, and advantages of the embodiments of the present invention clearer, the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present invention will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. Obviously, the described embodiments are only some embodiments of the present invention, not all embodiments. Based on the embodiments of the present invention, all other embodiments obtained by those skilled in the art without creative effort are within the scope of protection of the present invention.
[0021] The features and illustrative embodiments of various aspects of the present invention will now be described in detail. Numerous specific details are set forth in the following detailed description to provide a thorough understanding of the invention. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the invention may be practiced without requiring some of these specific details. The following description of embodiments is merely intended to provide a better understanding of the invention by illustrating examples of the invention. The invention is by no means limited to any specific setups and methods set forth below, but covers any improvements, substitutions, and modifications to structures, methods, and devices without departing from the spirit of the invention. Well-known structures and techniques are not shown in the drawings and the following description to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the invention.
[0022] In the description of this invention, it should be noted that the directions or positional relationships indicated by terms such as "center," "upper," "lower," "left," "right," "vertical," "horizontal," "inner," and "outer" are based on the directions or positional relationships shown in the accompanying drawings and are only for the convenience of describing and simplifying the invention, and should not be construed as limiting the invention. Furthermore, the use of ordinal numbers (e.g., "first and second," etc.) is for distinguishing objects and is not limited to this order, and should not be construed as indicating or implying relative importance.
[0023] In the description of this invention, it should be noted that, unless otherwise explicitly specified and limited, the terms "installation," "connection," and "linking" should be interpreted broadly, encompassing both direct connection and indirect connection via an intermediate medium. Those skilled in the art can understand the specific meaning of these terms in this invention based on the specific circumstances.
[0024] It should be noted that, unless otherwise specified, the embodiments of the present invention and the features thereof can be combined with each other, and the various embodiments can be referenced and cited in each other. The present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments.
[0025] The method of the present invention will be further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments.
[0026] To address the shortcomings in the design of the aforementioned controller software, this invention proposes a design method and apparatus for general-purpose airborne controller software.
[0027] This invention takes into account that different controllers have different physical sensors, but the differences between different controllers are actually combinations of different functional module components: buttons, knobs, message sending, etc. For example, a display controller = 16 buttons + 2 knobs, a multi-function keyboard = 32 buttons, a cursor controller = 4 buttons + 2 switches, etc. Furthermore, although there may be switching of underlying states between different projects, the underlying states can be unified into several fixed designs: physical address acquisition, chip port communication, and message format settings. These designs can all be designed at the same level and defined as a unified interface, which can be defined as the driver layer. Therefore, the software design layer framework can be initially designed as a hierarchical pattern (…). Figure 1 ).
[0028] The acquisition of underlying state data can be further generalized. Attributes such as address, offset, and length are typically described directly as corresponding data in the code, but these attributes can be extracted and defined in an interface control file. The attribute values are filled into the interface control file, and a tool generates a configuration file from these values. The software can then read the configuration file to perform differentiated reading of underlying state data. This forms the design framework for the underlying data extraction software. Figure 2 ).
[0029] By combining the software design layer framework and the design framework of the underlying data extraction software, a general airborne controller software design framework can be formed. Figure 3 ).
[0030] The current functional combinations of various controllers mainly include: buttons, knobs, scroll wheels, and internal heartbeat functions, with the difference lying in the number of functional points in the combination. From a coding perspective, the code of current controllers also involves some basic operations on these functional attributes; the difference lies only in the combination of these functions used by different controllers. Based on the above characteristics, a general airborne controller software design framework is formed. The overall description is as follows: Given that the current controller consists of a combination of multiple functional points, and considering the actual code implementation, functional point attributes are extracted. These attributes are then placed into a specific configuration file, which is used by the code to read the corresponding attribute values and perform the appropriate logic processing. The general airborne controller software design framework consists of two parts: the first part is the configuration file generation module, and the second part is the general controller module. Figure 4 ) I. Configuration file generation module In this project, through requirements capture and definition, the functions and business combinations of each controller can be clearly defined through the interface control document. Controller users use the interface control document as a guide to fill in the corresponding attribute values for the controllers in the project.
[0031] The attribute values in the table differ somewhat from the format that the existing controller module can read. Therefore, a file in the appropriate format needs to be generated so that the existing controller module can read and parse it. This appropriate format file is the configuration file, and in order to generate the corresponding configuration file from the table, a corresponding tool needs to be developed.
[0032] Design controller configuration file generation tool ( Figure 5 Its main functions are: 1) Verify that the format and content of the input controller function business forms conform to the specifications; 2) Generate corresponding data from the contents and relationships in the controller function business table using the tool; 3) Output the data generated by the tool as a .c file according to the format designed in the controller configuration file.
[0033] II. General Controller Module After the controller configuration file is defined and designed, the general controller module with the already divided hierarchy is further improved to change from directly reading and processing the attribute values to using the configuration file as input to read the configuration file and obtain the changes in the corresponding attribute values.
[0034] Furthermore, for aspects whose attributes cannot be extracted and placed into the configuration file due to project-specific characteristics, they will still be retained as non-generalizable parts. Figure 6 ) III. Overall Design Scheme After completing the design of the configuration file generation module and the general controller module, the general airborne controller software design framework is as follows. Figure 3 As shown.
[0035] The externally input interface control file guides the filling of the business function form and, together with the business function form, serves as input to the controller tool. The tool generates a configuration file product through a series of format conversions and other operations. The configuration file will be compiled together with the general controller module as input and read, parsed and processed by the general controller module.
[0036] The above description is merely an embodiment of the present invention and is not intended to limit the present invention in any way. Any simple modifications, alterations, or equivalent structural changes made to the above embodiments based on the technical essence of the present invention shall still fall within the protection scope of the present invention.
Claims
1. A design method for a general airborne controller system software framework, characterized in that, include: Based on the number N of controllers in the target airborne controller system, an airborne controller system software framework is generated, which includes N general-purpose controllers; N is a positive integer. Based on the functions of the N controllers in the target airborne controller system, generate configuration files for N general controllers and place them into the general controller of the airborne controller system software framework.
2. The design method of the general airborne controller system software framework according to claim 1, characterized in that, The functionalities of a general-purpose controller should include at least: buttons, knobs, switches, and message sending; The configuration file contains the corresponding controller's property values.
3. The design method for the general airborne controller system software framework according to claim 1, characterized in that, Based on the functions of the N controllers in the target airborne controller system, generate configuration files for N general controllers, including: Based on the interface control documentation of the target airborne controller system, generate configuration files for N general-purpose controllers.
4. The design method of the general airborne controller system software framework according to claim 1, characterized in that, The configuration file is a .c file, and the method also includes: Compile the configuration file and the general controller module together.
5. The design method of the general airborne controller system software framework according to claim 1, characterized in that, The general components of the airborne controller system software framework include: a driver layer and an application layer; The configuration file is placed in the application layer of the general controller in the airborne controller system software framework.
6. A design apparatus for a general airborne controller system software framework, characterized in that, include: The framework generation gate is used to generate the airborne controller system software framework based on the number N of controllers in the target airborne controller system. The airborne controller system software framework includes N general-purpose controllers; the value of N is a positive integer. The configuration file generation module is used to generate configuration files for N general controllers based on the functions of the N controllers in the target airborne controller system, and then put them into the general controller of the airborne controller system software framework.
7. The design apparatus for the software framework of the universal airborne controller system according to claim 6, characterized in that, The functionalities of a general-purpose controller should include at least: buttons, knobs, switches, and message sending; The configuration file contains the corresponding controller's property values.
8. The design apparatus for the software framework of the universal airborne controller system according to claim 6, characterized in that, The configuration file generation module is specifically used to generate configuration files for N general controllers based on the interface control documents of the target airborne controller system.
9. The design apparatus for the software framework of the universal airborne controller system according to claim 6, characterized in that, The configuration file is a .c file, and the configuration file generation module is also used to compile the configuration file and the general controller module together.
10. The design apparatus for the software framework of a universal airborne controller system according to claim 6, characterized in that, The general components of the airborne controller system software framework include: a driver layer and an application layer; The configuration file is placed in the application layer of the general controller in the airborne controller system software framework.