Formal Language Aircraft Intent Prediction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current air traffic management systems lack the accuracy and commonality needed to predict aircraft trajectories unambiguously, leading to inefficiencies in air traffic handling and potential safety issues due to varying trajectory modeling approaches and limited coordination between ground and airborne systems.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method using a formal language to express aircraft intent, which involves receiving and storing flight information, deriving instructions for aerodynamic configuration and motion, and ensuring compliance with rules to provide a common framework for aircraft intent description, enabling accurate and synchronized trajectory predictions across different systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If different trajectory modeling approaches are used by ground and airborne systems, then system flexibility is maintained, but prediction accuracy and commonality deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies universality by creating a common trajectory modeling framework that can be used by both ground-based ATM systems and airborne Flight Management Systems. The standardized intent description language and formal semantics enable different systems to use the same modeling approach, ensuring prediction accuracy and commonality while maintaining the flexibility to express diverse flight intents through a unified interface.
2Adaptability or versatility
If flight intent is used as a basic blueprint, then operational flexibility is maintained, but trajectory unambiguity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer between the flexible flight intent blueprint and the specific trajectory computation. The formal intent description language with standardized semantics acts as a mediator that translates operational flexibility into unambiguous trajectory specifications, ensuring that the basic blueprint can be interpreted consistently across different systems and contexts.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies parameter changes by transforming the qualitative flight intent parameters into quantitative, standardized parameters in the formal description language. This transformation process converts flexible operational concepts into precise, unambiguous specifications that can be reliably processed by trajectory computation systems while preserving the original operational intent.
3Ease of operation
If aircraft intent is expressed without a formal language, then ease of communication is maintained, but prediction reliability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces informal, natural language communication about aircraft intent with a formalized description language. This substitution transforms subjective, ambiguous expressions into objective, precisely-defined specifications that can be reliably processed by computational systems, thereby maintaining ease of communication through standardized interfaces while dramatically improving prediction reliability.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention provides a computer-implemented method of producing a description of aircraft intent expressed using a formal language. The description may be used to predict aircraft trajectory, for example by air traffic management. Rules are used in association with information provided to generate a set of instructions describing both the aerodynamic configuration of the aircraft and the motion of the aircraft. These instructions are checked to ensure that they describe unambiguously the aircraft's trajectory. The instructions are then expressed using a formal language.