Flight Management System Custom Route Automation
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Solution Overview
Problem
In emergency situations, aircraft pilots face increased mental workload and stress when deviating from original flight plans, which can lead to reduced situational awareness and pilot error due to the need to consider numerous pieces of information quickly.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for managing user-configured custom routes in aircraft, allowing pilots to input and save alternative routes as contingent procedures, which can be automatically activated when necessary, reducing the workload by enabling the autopilot to execute the custom route with predefined altitude and speed targets.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If pilots manually manage alternative routes during emergency situations, then flexibility and adaptability are improved, but mental workload and stress increase leading to reduced situational awareness
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-generates multiple alternative routes and stores them in a database before emergencies occur. When an emergency situation arises, the flight management system automatically retrieves and activates pre-calculated alternative routes, eliminating the need for pilots to manually compute alternatives under stress while maintaining operational flexibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The flight management system automatically monitors flight conditions, detects anomalies, and autonomously selects and activates appropriate alternative routes without requiring manual pilot intervention. The system serves itself by automatically managing the route selection process, reducing pilot workload while maintaining adaptability.
2Productivity
If pilots consider numerous pieces of information quickly during emergencies, then decision-making capability is improved, but pilot error increases due to stress and reduced situational awareness
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors flight parameters, aircraft status, and environmental conditions, providing real-time feedback to the flight management system. This automated feedback loop enables rapid decision-making based on current flight state without requiring pilots to manually process numerous parameters, thereby improving decision-making speed while reducing the risk of human error.
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces the human cognitive processing mechanism with an automated computer-based flight management system. The FMCS processes flight information, evaluates alternative routes, and executes selections automatically, substituting mechanical/computational processing for human mental processing to eliminate pilot error while maintaining rapid decision-making capability.
3Manufacturing precision
If the system provides detailed route management capabilities, then route precision and control are improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The flight management system performs multiple functions including route generation, storage, selection, activation, and monitoring within a single integrated platform. By consolidating these functions into one universal system rather than separate specialized systems, the architecture maintains route precision while managing overall system complexity through functional integration.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses standardized data structures and templates for representing routes, waypoints, and flight parameters. By copying and reusing these standardized formats across different route configurations and management operations, the system achieves precise route control through consistent data representation while reducing complexity through pattern repetition rather than unique customizations.
Data Source
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AI summary
Methods and systems are provided for managing user-configured custom routes for operating a vehicle. One method involves obtaining a user-configured route for operating a vehicle, providing a first graphical user interface (GUI) display including one or more GUI elements for receiving one or more user input values defining the user-configured route, automatically generating an identifier associated with the user-configured route based on the one or more user input values, and thereafter generating a graphical representation of the user-configured route that includes the autogenerated identifier associated with the user-configured route.