Aircraft Recovery Trajectory Segmentation for Full-Envelope Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional aircraft flight envelope protection systems are inadequate in handling a wide range of recovery scenarios and collision avoidance, as they rely on disparate systems that evaluate individual aspects, making it impractical to compute all possible options for varying threats in real-world flying conditions.
Innovation Solution
A modular, piecewise aircraft flight envelope protection system that precomputes projected recovery trajectories using a processor to selectively concatenate predefined recovery mode segments, generating a sequence of trajectories that address immediate threats and continually assess and deprioritize non-viable options, ultimately triggering an autopilot response when necessary.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional disparate protection systems evaluate individual aspects separately, then each system can focus on its specific function, but the overall system complexity increases and cannot handle all possible recovery scenarios
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple disparate protection systems into a single unified flight envelope protection system that evaluates all flight aspects simultaneously. This integration allows the system to handle complete recovery scenarios by coordinating pitch, roll, and thrust controls together, rather than as separate independent systems, thereby reducing overall system complexity while maintaining comprehensive protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The unified protection system performs multiple functions simultaneously - evaluating flight envelope constraints, generating recovery trajectories, and controlling multiple aircraft systems (pitch, roll, thrust) through a single multi-functional controller. This universal approach allows one system to replace multiple specialized systems while handling all recovery scenarios.
2Reliability
If the system computes all possible recovery options for varying threats, then complete protection coverage is achieved, but the computational load becomes impractical for real-time operation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the continuous flight envelope into discrete constraint regions and divides recovery trajectories into sequential phases. By segmenting the problem space, the system can evaluate representative scenarios rather than all possible continuous variations, significantly reducing computational load while maintaining comprehensive protection coverage across the entire flight envelope.
Solution Approach 2:
The system computes a sufficient set of recovery trajectories that covers all critical threat scenarios without exhaustively calculating every possible variation. By identifying and computing only the necessary recovery options for each threat type, the system achieves adequate protection coverage with practical real-time computation requirements.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the system precomputes multiple recovery trajectories, then more recovery options are available for threat avoidance, but the memory and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system precomputes and stores recovery trajectories in advance for various threat scenarios and flight conditions. By performing this computation beforehand, the trajectories are available for immediate execution during actual threats without requiring real-time calculation, thus providing versatile recovery options while managing data storage requirements through advance preparation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system stores different levels of trajectory detail for different flight conditions - full detailed trajectories for critical scenarios and simplified or reference trajectories for less critical conditions. This local quality approach optimizes memory usage by allocating storage resources according to the actual need for each flight regime.
Data Source
AI summary
A projected recovery trajectory for an aircraft autopilot system is precomputed by providing a stored set of predefined recovery mode segments, including: a mode 1 segment that models the aircraft coasting; a mode 2 segment that models the aircraft executing a nose high recovery; a mode 3 segment that models the aircraft executing a nose low recovery; a mode 4 segment that models the aircraft executing a throttle only recovery; and a mode 5 segment that models the aircraft executing a terrain avoidance recovery. A processor generates at least one projected recovery trajectory based on a current state of the aircraft, where the processor selectively concatenates selected ones of the predefined recovery mode segments into a sequence and uses that sequence to generate the projected trajectory.