Touch Screen Flight Planning Interface Reducing Heads-Down Time
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for creating and modifying flight plans in aircraft require significant typing and heads-down time, reducing pilot situational awareness, as they rely on cumbersome and inefficient electronic displays for navigation and chart management.
Innovation Solution
A flight planning system featuring a touch-screen instrument panel with a processor, memory, and various components for displaying maps, aeronautical charts, radio frequencies, weather representations, and virtual flight plans, allowing pilots to interactively plan flights using a touch screen in the cockpit.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional electronic displays are used for flight planning, then flight plan management can be performed, but the operation becomes cumbersome and inefficient, requiring significant typing and heads-down time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical keyboard input and manual chart handling with a touch screen interface that allows pilots to interact with flight planning data through direct touch gestures. This substitution eliminates the need for typing and enables intuitive manipulation of flight plans, charts, and navigation data through tap, swipe, and pinch operations, significantly reducing heads-down time while maintaining full flight plan management capability
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a digital replica of traditional paper charts and flight planning materials on the touch screen display. By copying the visual layout and information structure of paper charts into an interactive digital format, pilots can access and manipulate flight planning data in a familiar format while benefiting from touch-based interaction and dynamic updates, eliminating the need for physical chart handling and manual data entry
2Productivity
If manual data entry is required for flight planning, then flight plans can be created, but pilot situational awareness is reduced due to heads-down time
Solution Approach 1:
The touch screen interface replaces manual data entry operations with intuitive touch-based interactions. Pilots can select airports, waypoints, and flight parameters by tapping on their visual representations on the screen rather than typing data, allowing them to maintain a heads-up posture while completing flight planning tasks efficiently
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically retrieves and populates flight planning data based on pilot selections. When a pilot selects an airport or waypoint on the touch screen, the system automatically obtains associated data such as frequencies, runways, and navigation information, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the time pilots spend looking down at controls
3Adaptability or versatility
If traditional avionics displays are used, then navigation information can be displayed, but the interface is cumbersome and inefficient for interactive flight planning
Solution Approach 1:
The touch screen display serves multiple functions simultaneously - it displays navigation charts, allows flight plan creation and modification, provides access to aeronautical data, and enables direct interaction with all flight planning functions through a single unified interface. This multi-functionality consolidates what were previously separate controls and displays into one versatile device, improving adaptability while managing complexity through integration
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds the dimension of direct touch interaction to the traditional display interface. By allowing pilots to touch the display surface directly rather than using separate controls, the system creates an intuitive spatial relationship between the visual information and the control mechanism, making the interface more adaptable to different flight planning tasks while maintaining simplicity through natural gesture-based interaction
Data Source
AI summary
The invention described herein provides a flight crew with an easier, more intuitive, system and method to create a flight plan. A flight planning system is presented for navigation of an aircraft utilizing a touch screen display device mounted in an aircraft cockpit spanning the width and height of the instrument panel. The system provides navigational views, an interactive map, charts, a radio frequency component, a weather component, and a virtual flight plan. A flight planning method is presented that uses an interactive map on a touch screen device in an aircraft cockpit. The method accepts user inputs and displays a desired flight plan on the map. A method for providing a chart on a touch screen device is presented that includes presenting a list of menu options on a touch screen mounted in an aircraft cockpit. The method provides the flight crew with heads-up operation, providing greater situational awareness.