3D Virtual Corridor Interface for Vertical Landing Guidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current user interfaces in aerial vehicles, particularly for urban air mobility vehicles, are often cluttered and lack essential information for pilots during takeoff and landing operations, leading to reduced situational awareness and increased risk of accidents due to blocked visual contact with the landing zone and adverse weather conditions.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method generates improved user interfaces with UAM visualization interfaces that create a virtual corridor within a virtual environment, providing pilots with an egocentric, exocentric, and profile view of the aircraft's position relative to a safe operational volume, enhancing situational awareness and guiding safe vertical takeoff and landing maneuvers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional user interfaces are used in aerial vehicles, then device complexity is reduced, but situational awareness and safety during takeoff and landing deteriorate due to cluttered displays and insufficient information
Solution Approach 1:
The user interface is segmented into multiple functional zones: a virtual corridor display showing safe flight paths, flight sensor data panels, navigation information, and warning systems. Each zone serves a specific purpose and is spatially organized to prevent information overload while maintaining comprehensive situational awareness.
Solution Approach 2:
The interface transitions from traditional 2D flat displays to a 3D virtual environment representation, creating a immersive cockpit display that presents flight information in spatial dimensions. This allows pilots to perceive depth, distance, and spatial relationships more intuitively during critical maneuvers.
2Loss of information
If comprehensive flight information is provided in the user interface, then situational awareness improves, but visual clutter increases making the interface harder to interpret
Solution Approach 1:
Different regions of the display provide different types of information with varying levels of detail. The virtual corridor area shows spatial navigation data, while peripheral zones display flight parameters and warnings. Each local region is optimized for its specific function, allowing pilots to quickly locate and interpret relevant information without being overwhelmed by the entire interface.
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces traditional mechanical gauges and analog displays with digital rendering of flight information. Flight sensor data is processed and presented as graphical representations, virtual indicators, and augmented reality overlays, enabling more efficient information presentation and reducing visual clutter through intelligent data visualization.
3Reliability
If visual contact with the landing zone is blocked during vertical landing, then pilot safety deteriorates, but alternative visualization methods increase system complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a virtual copy of the real-world environment and flight parameters, rendering a digital representation of the landing zone, terrain, and aircraft position. This virtual model provides pilots with situational awareness equivalent to direct visual contact, allowing safe operation even when physical visibility is blocked by weather or aircraft positioning.
Solution Approach 2:
The virtual environment display acts as an intermediary between the pilot and the physical landing zone. When direct visual contact is blocked, the system mediates the pilot's perception by generating real-time virtual imagery based on flight sensor data, providing the necessary spatial and environmental information without requiring direct line-of-sight to the landing area.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus includes at least one processor and at least one non-transitory memory having computer-coded instructions stored thereon that, in execution with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to receive flight sensor data associated with an aerial vehicle operating in an environment, generate a virtual environment based at least in part on the flight sensor data, generate, within the virtual environment, a virtual corridor defining a volume within which the aerial vehicle is safe to operate, and cause rendering of a user interface comprising at least one visualization interface depicting at least the virtual corridor together with a transition point at which a vertical takeoff or a vertical landing is to commence is indicated.