Landing Exceedance Warning System for Sloped Terrain
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional warning systems for pilots fail to adequately address the challenges of landing on unimproved, sloped, or moving terrain, as they do not provide effective advance warnings or avoidance assistance for excessively sloped surfaces, which can lead to aircraft instability and accidents.
Innovation Solution
A system comprising a surface slope determination system, an inertial navigation system, and a flight control system that measures distances and attitude information to estimate the slope angle of the landing surface, identifies warning conditions, and performs avoidance measures through a pilot cuing device, providing tactile, visual, or aural cues to prevent unsafe landings.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional warning systems are used for landing, then basic flight condition warnings are provided, but they fail to provide adequate warnings for sloped or moving terrain and do not enable advance avoidance assistance
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary computational layer between the raw sensor data and the pilot's decision-making process. The flight control system acts as a mediator that automatically processes distance measurements from multiple sensors, calculates slope angles, compares them against predefined safety thresholds, and generates warning signals. This intermediary system compensates for the pilot's limited ability to visually assess surface slope, especially in adverse weather conditions, thereby improving landing safety without adding operational complexity for the pilot.
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces the pilot's manual visual assessment and judgment mechanism with an automated electronic system. Instead of relying on the pilot's eyes and experience to evaluate surface suitability, the system uses electronic sensors to measure distances, computational algorithms to calculate slope angles, and electronic warning devices to communicate surface conditions to the pilot. This substitution of mechanical/visual assessment with electronic automation directly addresses the limitation of pilot judgment in assessing sloped terrain.
2Measurement precision
If the pilot relies on visual judgment to assess landing surface slope, then no additional equipment is needed, but the assessment is inaccurate especially in adverse weather conditions
Solution Approach 1:
The system replaces the pilot's visual assessment mechanism with electronic sensing and computation. Multiple distance sensors electronically measure the terrain profile, and the flight control system computationally calculates the slope angle with high precision. This electronic substitution eliminates the limitations of visual judgment in adverse weather while maintaining relatively simple system architecture through integration with existing flight control computers.
Solution Approach 2:
The flight control system performs multiple functions: it controls aircraft flight parameters and simultaneously processes terrain distance measurements to calculate slope angles and generate warnings. By making the flight control system multi-functional, the patent avoids adding a separate dedicated slope measurement device, thereby improving measurement precision without proportionally increasing device complexity. The existing flight control computer is leveraged to perform the additional terrain assessment function.
3Reliability
If the pilot attempts to land on excessively sloped terrain, then the aircraft may become unbalanced and overturn, but there is no advance warning or avoidance assistance available
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary assessment of the landing surface slope before the aircraft reaches the critical decision point for landing. By continuously measuring distances to the terrain and calculating slope angles during the approach phase, the system identifies excessively sloped surfaces in advance. The warning is generated before the pilot commits to the landing, providing sufficient time for the pilot to take corrective action or select an alternative landing site, thereby preventing aircraft instability and overturning.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a feedback loop where distance measurements from sensors are continuously fed into the flight control system, which calculates current slope angles and compares them against safety thresholds. When the slope exceeds the threshold, a warning signal is immediately fed back to the pilot through audible or visual alerts. This real-time feedback mechanism enables the pilot to respond promptly to unsafe conditions, providing both advance warning and ongoing monitoring throughout the landing approach.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods provide sloped landing exceedance warning and avoidance. One system includes a surface slope determination system configured to measure a plurality of distances between an aircraft and a surface. The system also includes an inertial navigation system configured to sense aircraft attitude information. A flight control system is communicatively coupled to the surface slope determination system and the inertial navigation system. The flight control system is configured to estimate a slope angle of the surface. The flight control system is also configured to determine one or more approach characteristics based on the slope angle and the aircraft attitude information. The flight control system is additionally configured to identify a warning condition and perform one or more avoidance measures when one or more of the approach characteristics exceeds a predetermined threshold. A pilot cuing device also generates a notification when the warning condition is identified.