Contextual Building Height Display for Urban Air Mobility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional navigation systems for urban air mobility vehicles fail to provide relevant building height information effectively, leading to cluttered and attention-intensive displays that can obscure critical obstacles, increasing the risk of collisions.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that obtain aircraft flight information, retrieve building data, and assign visual characteristics to buildings based on their height relative to the aircraft's altitude, displaying them in a way that groups buildings by height difference and emphasizes those within the safety envelope, reducing operator burden and enhancing situational awareness.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If traditional navigation views are used, then the system is simple, but relevant building height information is not provided effectively
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments building information by height characteristics, dividing buildings into different categories (tall buildings, medium buildings, short buildings) based on their height relative to the aircraft's flight altitude. This segmentation allows the navigation system to selectively display only relevant building height information, reducing information loss without requiring complete display of all buildings, thus balancing information completeness with system simplicity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different visual characteristics to different buildings based on their local height properties. Buildings are displayed with varying visual attributes (such as different colors, sizes, or symbols) according to their height categories, allowing operators to quickly identify relevant height information without uniform display of all buildings, thereby improving information delivery without proportionally increasing system complexity.
2Loss of information
If more complex three dimensional navigation views are used, then building height information is provided, but the display becomes cluttered with irrelevant buildings
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and displays only the relevant portion of building information based on the aircraft's current altitude and flight path. By taking out and displaying only buildings that are height-relevant to the current flight context, the system provides necessary building height information while eliminating clutter from irrelevant buildings, thus improving information delivery without requiring display of the complete three-dimensional building dataset.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent dynamically adjusts the display of building information based on the aircraft's changing altitude and position. As the aircraft moves through different altitude zones, the set of displayed buildings and their visual characteristics change dynamically to match the current flight context, ensuring that building height information remains relevant and non-cluttered throughout the flight, rather than displaying a static complete view.
3Reliability
If complete building information is displayed, then all obstacles are visible, but operator attention is excessively required to avoid collisions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses different visual characteristics (including color variations) to encode building height categories. By changing the visual appearance of buildings based on their height relative to the aircraft altitude, the system conveys critical collision avoidance information through intuitive visual cues rather than requiring operators to analyze complete numerical building data, thus maintaining reliability while reducing operational burden.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary categorization and filtering of building information before presentation to the operator. Buildings are pre-classified into height categories and only those relevant to the current flight altitude are selected for display, preparing the information in advance so that operators receive filtered, actionable data rather than raw complete building datasets, thereby maintaining collision avoidance capability while reducing attention requirements.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are methods, systems, and non-transitory computer-readable media for providing contextual building height information to one or more operators of an aircraft. For instance, the method may include obtaining aircraft flight information including a current position and a current altitude of the aircraft; and retrieving, from a database, building information for one or more buildings located in a flight path area, the flight path area including the current position of the aircraft. The method may further include assigning one or more visual characteristics to each of the one or more buildings located in the flight path area based at least in part on the building information and the current altitude of the aircraft; and displaying, to the one or more operators of the aircraft, the one or more buildings located in the flight path area with the assigned one or more visual characteristics.