Aircraft Weather Obstacle Polygonization for Flight Path Planning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing aircraft navigation systems face challenges in efficiently processing complex weather data to automatically avoid meteorological obstacles without overburdening computational resources.
Innovation Solution
A weather data system on board the aircraft processes georeferenced meteorological data to categorize weather severity levels, simplifies obstacle outlines into polygons, and provides descriptors to the flight management system, adapting processing based on flight requirements to optimize computational efficiency and path planning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If complex weather data are processed with high precision to accurately represent cloud shapes and meteorological obstacles, then measurement precision is improved, but computational resources required increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments complex weather data into discrete severity levels (e.g., light, moderate, heavy precipitation categories). Instead of processing continuous high-precision data, the system divides the data space into distinct segments representing different weather intensity levels, reducing computational complexity while preserving essential information for path planning
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms the parameter representation of weather data from continuous high-precision values to discrete severity level categories. By changing the parameter space from continuous coordinates and intensities to discrete severity levels, the system reduces the computational burden on the flight management system while maintaining sufficient accuracy for obstacle avoidance
2Extent of automation
If detailed meteorological obstacle data are provided to enable automatic path computation, then automation capability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary processing layer between the weather radar/sensors and the flight management system. This intermediary system performs preliminary processing, categorization, and simplification of weather data into standardized severity levels, acting as a mediator that reduces the complexity burden on the flight management system while enabling automatic path computation
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates simplified representations (copies) of the complex meteorological obstacle data in the form of discrete severity level categories and polygon descriptors. These simplified copies retain the essential spatial and intensity information needed for path planning while being much easier for the flight management system to process
Data Source
AI summary
A weather data system in an aircraft which: processes georeferenced meteorological-obstacle data in order to categorize a weather severity of the meteorological obstacles and to obtain two-dimensional meteorological-obstacle images that are separated by weather-severity level; polygonizes through outline simplification the meteorological obstacles of the two-dimensional images, for each weather-severity level, in order to obtain polygons representative of the meteorological obstacles; and provides descriptors of meteorological obstacles to a flight management system of the aircraft, the descriptors describing georeferenced polygons; receives at least one requirement parameter representative of a requirement of the flight management system; and configures the polygonization and/or the data processing depending on the requirement.