Cockpit Flight Vision Display Deactivation for Glide Path Offsets
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing Enhanced Flight Vision Systems (EFVS) in aircraft cockpits face high failure probabilities, particularly in image acquisition systems, leading to risks of spatial and temporal offsets, which can result in inappropriate piloting commands and potential collisions during low-altitude approaches, as the image acquisition system's quality assurance level is not sufficient to meet DAL-A standards, making it expensive to develop a high-quality system.
Innovation Solution
The EFVS system is enhanced by a display system that acquires and compares the flight path angle with a nominal angle, deactivating images if the difference exceeds a certain value to prevent excessive dive commands, and provides alerts or pre-alerts based on angular values, ensuring pilot safety by requiring direct visibility checks when image offsets occur.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If the image acquisition system uses lower quality assurance level (DAL-B or DAL-C) to reduce cost, then manufacturing cost is reduced, but system reliability deteriorates due to higher failure probability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a monitoring system as an intermediary component that detects spatial and temporal offsets in the image acquisition system. This mediator monitors the quality of images and triggers alerts when degradation is detected, allowing the use of lower-cost image acquisition hardware while maintaining operational safety through active monitoring and pilot warning mechanisms.
2Device complexity
If the image acquisition system operates without monitoring to reduce complexity, then device complexity is reduced, but measurement precision deteriorates due to undetected spatial and temporal offsets
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the monitoring system continuously detects offsets in the image acquisition system and provides feedback to the pilot through alert messages. When spatial or temporal offsets exceed thresholds, the system warns the pilot to switch to direct vision, thereby maintaining measurement precision through feedback-driven quality control without requiring complex real-time correction systems.
3Reliability
If the system continuously monitors flight path angle and image offsets to maintain safety, then system reliability is improved, but device complexity increases due to additional monitoring and comparison functions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial monitoring by focusing only on critical parameters (flight path angle and image offsets) rather than comprehensive system monitoring. The monitoring system performs selective detection of specific offset types and triggers alerts only when thresholds are exceeded, achieving adequate safety monitoring with reduced complexity compared to full-system continuous monitoring.
Data Source
AI summary
An enhanced flight vision system for an aircraft includes an image acquisition system configured to acquire images of the surroundings outside the aircraft and a display system configured to receive images produced by the image acquisition system and to display these images on a display in the cockpit of the aircraft. The display system is configured to acquire information about the flight path angle of the aircraft when approaching a runway, to calculate a difference between the flight path angle of the aircraft and a nominal angle and to deactivate the display of the images received from the image acquisition system on the display when the absolute value of the difference is greater than a first angular value.