Aircraft Landing Decision Aid for Ship Deck Operations
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Solution Overview
Problem
The challenge of safely authorizing the landing of a rotary-wing aircraft on a mobile vehicle like a ship is complicated by the need to quickly assess and meet multiple dynamic safety criteria, with current systems lacking decision-making aids for operators, leading to potential risks due to human error or prolonged hovering times.
Innovation Solution
A device that uses predictive criteria to generate temporal windows for landing authorization, combining computer evaluations of aircraft and ship attitudes, swell, wind, and other factors with operator-acknowledged non-predictive criteria to provide a graphical indicator for safe landing opportunities, reducing operator workload and error.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the operator manually evaluates multiple dynamic safety criteria in real-time, then the landing authorization decision can be made, but the decision-making process is slow and prone to human error
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary decision support system that acts as a mediator between the complex safety criteria evaluation and the operator. This system automatically processes multiple dynamic parameters (swell, wind, aircraft attitude, ship motion) and presents simplified landing authorization recommendations to the operator, reducing both decision time and human error while maintaining safety standards.
Solution Approach 2:
The manual mechanical evaluation process by the operator is replaced with an automated electronic system that continuously monitors and evaluates safety criteria. The system substitutes human cognitive processing with automated computational analysis of multiple parameters, significantly reducing decision time and eliminating human error in criterion evaluation.
2Reliability
If the operator waits for favorable conditions to authorize landing, then safety is improved, but the hovering time increases and risks accumulate
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary evaluation of safety criteria and predicts future landing windows before they occur. By anticipating favorable conditions and preparing authorization recommendations in advance, the system enables timely landing decisions without compromising safety, thus reducing accumulated risks associated with prolonged hovering.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors safety criteria and provides real-time feedback to the operator about landing authorization status. This feedback mechanism allows the operator to make informed decisions about when to authorize landing based on current and predicted conditions, balancing safety requirements with the need to minimize hovering time and accumulated risks.
3Reliability
If multiple safety criteria are monitored manually, then comprehensive safety assessment is achieved, but operator workload increases and errors occur
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts the complex task of evaluating multiple safety criteria from the operator and transfers it to an automated processing system. The operator is relieved of monitoring individual parameters (swell, wind, attitudes, speeds) and instead receives synthesized landing authorization recommendations, significantly reducing workload while maintaining comprehensive safety assessment.
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges multiple separate safety criterion evaluations into a single integrated landing authorization decision support output. Instead of requiring the operator to separately assess swell conditions, wind conditions, aircraft attitudes, and ship motions, the system combines all these evaluations into one comprehensive recommendation, simplifying the operator's task while maintaining thorough safety checking.
Data Source
Figure 1
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Figure 3A~3B
AI summary
The aircraft landing assistance system (10), the aircraft being remotely controlled from a mobile station, called a ship (11), includes means for receiving data from the aircraft, including the aircraft's attitudes, the aircraft being in hover ready to land, the landing decision being made under certain conditions, the system including a computer for providing time indicators showing that the conditions are met. The system includes a time gauge comprising a time scale indicating movable graphic zones (2) representing the periods during which the conditions are met to authorize a landing.