Augmented Reality Helmet Display for Formation Flight Spacing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Formation flight, essential for military missions, is inherently risky due to the challenge of maintaining situational awareness and executing emergency procedures effectively, often leading to mid-air collisions.
Innovation Solution
An intelligent augmented reality system utilizing networked computing devices and augmented reality display devices provides pilots with critical formation flight information, including aircraft spacing, predicted trajectory data, collision avoidance alerts, and chalk-specific information, enhancing situational awareness and response capabilities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If formation flight operations are conducted with tight spacing to improve operational efficiency, then productivity increases, but the risk of mid-air collisions and safety decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculations of predicted trajectories and collision risk assessments before actual collision risk occurs. By pre-calculating where aircraft will be in future time steps and identifying potential conflicts ahead of time, the system enables proactive spacing adjustments and collision avoidance maneuvers, allowing tight formation spacing while maintaining safety through advance warning and response preparation.
Solution Approach 2:
The augmented reality display provides real-time visual feedback to pilots showing predicted trajectories of formation aircraft, relative positions, and collision risk indicators. This continuous feedback loop allows pilots to monitor spacing and trajectory predictions live, making real-time adjustments to maintain safe distances while preserving tight formation configuration, thus balancing productivity with safety through informed decision-making.
2Reliability
If augmented reality display provides comprehensive formation flight information to enhance situational awareness, then safety improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The information display is segmented into distinct visual elements on the augmented reality display, with each element representing specific data such as predicted trajectories, collision risk alerts, relative positions, and formation spacing. By dividing the information into separate visual components rather than presenting it as a single complex data stream, the system enhances situational awareness through organized information delivery while keeping the interface intuitive and manageable.
Solution Approach 2:
The augmented reality display acts as an intermediary between the complex computational data and the pilot's decision-making process. It translates raw trajectory predictions, collision risk calculations, and formation data into visual representations that are easily interpreted at a glance, mediating between system complexity and operational simplicity to enhance situational awareness without overwhelming the pilot.
3Reliability
If real-time trajectory prediction and collision alert systems are implemented, then collision avoidance capability improves, but computational requirements and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs trajectory predictions and collision risk assessments at strategic intervals rather than continuously, and focuses computational resources on calculating only the critical parameters needed for collision avoidance (such as relative position, velocity, and predicted future positions) rather than all possible flight parameters. This partial action approach maintains effective collision avoidance capability while significantly reducing computational burden and energy consumption compared to full continuous analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are systems and associated methods for calculating and displaying formation flight information, to include aircraft spacing, predicted trajectory data, collision avoidance alerts, time on target details, and chalk-specific information, on an augmented reality display designed to interface with aviation helmets. Two or more networked computing devices, each on a separate aircraft, collect some combination of aircraft altitude, location, and inertial data, preform certain calculations, and then develops a virtual overlay according to aircraft relative position and nearby aircraft trajectories. The virtual overlay is further informed by compass and gyroscopic data from an operatively coupled augmented reality display device. The developed virtual overlay is then transmitted to the display device for viewing by the pilot. The display of relevant formation flight information using augmented reality tools may result in improved formation flight spacing, emergency procedure response, and collision avoidance.