Aircraft Safety Zone Determination for Collision Avoidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current airport navigation systems fail to provide pilots with precise and intuitive information about surrounding aircraft, leading to potential collisions due to uncertainties in aircraft position and behavior, particularly during taxiing and takeoff phases.
Innovation Solution
A method to determine and display a series of convex safety zones around an aircraft, including a probable occupancy zone, blast zone, wake turbulence zone, braking zone, and potential path zone, using reference points and additional data like speed and altitude, to enhance conflict detection and avoid collisions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional ADS-B position representation is used in cockpit viewing units, then the system is simple and intuitive, but it fails to provide precise information about aircraft position uncertainty and surrounding traffic behavior
Solution Approach 1:
The safety zone is segmented into multiple convex zones (probable occupancy zone, blast zone, wake turbulence zone, braking zone, potential path zone), each representing a different aspect of aircraft safety and uncertainty. This segmentation allows precise representation of position uncertainty and traffic behavior while maintaining computational tractability through convex polygon operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from representing aircraft position as a single point to representing it as a two-dimensional convex safety zone with multiple vertices. This dimensional expansion captures position uncertainty, aircraft dimensions, and potential movement paths, providing pilots with comprehensive spatial awareness without overwhelming system complexity.
2Reliability
If multiple safety zones are calculated and displayed to pilots, then collision risk is reduced, but the amount of information presented increases complexity
Solution Approach 1:
Different regions of the safety zone are assigned different qualities and meanings (probable occupancy, blast hazard, wake turbulence, braking distance, potential paths). This local differentiation allows pilots to understand specific hazards in different spatial zones without being overwhelmed by a single complex representation, improving both reliability and ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs different colors to represent various safety zones and their associated hazards. This visual encoding allows pilots to quickly comprehend the type and severity of potential conflicts without processing complex numerical data, reducing cognitive load while maintaining high collision avoidance capability.
3Measurement precision
If precise detection of conflict situations is implemented, then collision risk decreases, but false alerts may increase and hamper pilot operation
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculations to establish the convex safety zone and identify potential conflicts before they become critical threats. By proactively computing intersection points and conflict scenarios, the system provides advance warning to pilots, allowing them to take preventive action while minimizing false alerts through rigorous geometric analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors the relationship between the aircraft's safety zone and surrounding traffic, providing real-time feedback about potential conflicts. This feedback mechanism allows for dynamic adjustment of alerts based on actual conflict probability, maintaining high detection precision while reducing false alarms that would hamper pilot operation.
Data Source
AI summary
The general field of the invention is that of methods for determining safety zones surrounding an aircraft travelling or taking off from an airport zone, the safety zone being calculated at a determined instant that may be the present instant or the future instant. The method according to the invention comprises at least the following steps:Step 0: Establishment of a convex safety envelope surrounding the aircraft on the basis of reference points taken on the aircraft;Step 1: Establishment of a first convex envelope safety zone surrounding the aircraft on the basis of reference circles taken on the aircraft, each circle having as center one of the reference points and as radius the value of the uncertainty in the exact position of the aircraft.Other steps of the method make it possible to refine this first safety zone depending on whether the aircraft is in a taxiing or takeoff phase and depending on whether it is calculated at the present instant or at the future instant.