Flight Trajectory Planning Around Societal Impact Hotspots

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Solution Overview

Problem

Conventional flight routing systems fail to consider societal impacts such as noise and privacy issues, leading to 'hotspots' of aircraft traffic that disproportionately affect populations and hinder public acceptance of urban air mobility operations.

Innovation Solution

A system that generates flight trajectories by considering societal impact hotspots, using processors to obtain source and destination data, predict societal impact areas, and iteratively adjust routes to minimize noise, privacy, and visual impacts, leveraging land use and population density data for accurate demand forecasting.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Object-affected harmful factors

If conventional flight routing systems are used, then flight operations efficiency is maintained, but societal impact hotspots are created leading to noise and privacy issues

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesocietal impactVSAvoidflight routing system complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary identification of societal impact hotspots before finalizing flight routes. By predicting areas with high population density, noise sensitivity, and privacy concerns in advance, the system can pre-adjust routes to avoid these zones, preventing harmful societal impacts before they occur rather than reacting after flights are scheduled

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system introduces an intermediary layer between conventional flight routing and actual flight operations. This intermediary consists of societal impact maps and hotspot prediction algorithms that mediate the routing decisions, translating complex societal factors into actionable routing constraints without requiring complete system redesign

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Adaptability or versatility

If flight routes are optimized to avoid societal impact hotspots, then public acceptance improves, but flight paths become longer and more complex

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvepublic acceptanceVSAvoidflight path length

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSLength of moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system dynamically adjusts flight routes based on real-time and predictive societal impact data. Rather than using static avoidance zones, the system adapts routing decisions to current hotspots, population movements, and environmental conditions, allowing flexible path optimization that balances public acceptance with efficient flight lengths

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

Solution Approach 2:

The system changes key routing parameters such as altitude, lateral offset, and timing to minimize societal impact without significantly increasing flight path length. By adjusting these parameters within existing operational constraints, the system can route around hotspots efficiently rather than taking dramatically longer alternative paths

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

3Object-affected harmful factors

If aggregated effects of all local flight traffic are considered, then societal impact is reduced, but computational requirements and processing time increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaggregated societal impactVSAvoidcomputational processing time

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system segments the airspace into discrete zones with assigned societal impact characteristics based on population density, noise sensitivity, and privacy concerns. By dividing the complex routing problem into manageable spatial segments, the system can efficiently calculate aggregated impacts without processing every individual flight path through the entire airspace simultaneously

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements feedback loops where societal impact measurements from actual flights feed into updated hotspot predictions for future routing decisions. This continuous feedback mechanism allows the system to learn from aggregated traffic patterns over time, improving route optimization without requiring complete re-computation of all possible flight combinations

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentUS12586477B2Flight planning based on societal impact considerations

Publication Date: 2026.03.24 THE BOEING CO

AI summary

A method includes obtaining, at a device, source and destination data for one or more upcoming flights through a particular airspace. The method also includes obtaining, at the device, a map of societal impact hotspots associated with traffic through the particular airspace, and generating, based on the map of societal impact hotspots, a set of trajectories for the one or more upcoming flights through the particular airspace.