The research described in this paper explores the addition of conformally integrated traffic probes into an egocentric
Synthetic Vision (SV) Primary Flight Display (PFD). The underlying thought is that, although the traffic that is predicted
to cause a future loss of separation may not lie within the field of view of the display, the location where the loss of
separation is predicted to occur always will. Hence, rather than focusing on the depiction of traffic, which contributes to
level 2 Situation Awareness (SA), the concept pursues spatially integrated depiction of the airspace where a loss of
separation is predicted. This provides readily actionable conflict information, relieving pilots from the traffic position
and conflict estimation task and contributing to level 3 SA. The paper describes the integration of the data from the
traffic probe into an SV PFD. The advantages of the concept will be illustrated using several traffic conflict scenarios,
including an overtaking scenario involving unmanned aircraft. Given that unmanned aircraft may be markedly slower
than manned aircraft which operate within the same airspace, a spatially integrated depiction of airspace where a future
loss of separation is predicted, can help to preserve safety in classes of airspace that accommodate both manned and
unmanned aircraft. Additionally, examples are provided illustrating how traffic probes can support pilots in monitoring
the conformance of traffic to the priority rules of 14 CFR 91.113.
This paper addresses the design and implementation of a conceptual Enhanced/Synthetic Vision Primary Flight Display
format. The goal of this work is to explore the means to provide the operator of a UAV with an integrated view of the
constraints for the velocity vector, resulting in an explicit depiction of the margins/boundaries of the multi-dimensional
maneuver space. For non-time-critical situations, this is expected to provide support when the operator has the authority
to manually set avoidance maneuvers, or approve, veto or modify velocity vector changes proposed by the automation.
The integration of the upper bounds of the maneuver space, resulting from energy constraints, and the lower bounds,
resulting from terrain will be illustrated. Additionally, the application of a maneuver cost function will be discussed, for
identifying and prioritizing conflict avoidance options from an integrated multi-dimensional maneuver space, and
communicating those to the operator. Although the integrated avoidance functions have been developed with the UAV
application in mind, they have equal merit for manned aircraft. The need for specific GUI elements depends on the level
of authority of the system and the role of the operator/pilot, which may differ between manned and unmanned
applications.
For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), autonomous forms of autoland are being pursued that do not depend on special,
deployability restraining, ground-based equipment for the generation of the reference path to the runway. Typically,
these forms of autoland use runway location data from an onboard database to generate the reference path to the desired
location. Synthetic Vision (SV) technology provides the opportunity to use conformally integrated guidance reference
data to 'anchor' the goals of such an autoland system into the imagery of the nose-mounted camera. A potential use of
this is to support the operator in determining whether the vehicle is flying towards the right location in the real world,
e.g., the desired touchdown position on the runway. Standard conformally integrated symbology, representing e.g., the
future pathway and runway boundaries, supports conformance monitoring and detection of latent positioning errors.
Additional integration of landing performance criteria into the symbology supports assessment of the severity of these
errors, further aiding the operator in the decision whether the automated landing should be allowed to continue or not.
This paper presents the design and implementation of an SV overlay for UAV autoland procedures that is intended for
conformance and integrity monitoring during final approach. It provides preview of mode changes and decision points
and it supports the operator in assessing the integrity of the used guidance solution.
The guidance information that is available to the UAV operator typically suffers from limitations of data update rate and
system latency. Even when using a flight director command display, the manual control task is considerably more
difficult compared to piloting a manned aircraft. Results from earlier research into perspective guidance displays show
that these displays provide performance benefits and suggest a reduction of the negative effects of system latency. The
current study has shown that in case of limitations of data update rate and system latency the use of a conformal sensor
overlay showing a perspective presentation of the trajectory constraints is consistently superior to the flight director
command display. The superiority becomes more pronounced with an increase in data latency and a decrease in update
rate. The fact that the perspective pathway overlay as used in this study can be implemented on any graphics system that
is capable of rendering a set of 2-D vectors makes it a viable candidate for upgrades to current systems.
In the past fifteen years, several research programs have demonstrated potential advantages of synthetic vision
technology for manned aviation. More recently, some research programs have focused on integrating synthetic vision
technology into control stations for remotely controlled aircraft. The contribution of synthetic vision can be divided into
two categories. The depiction of the environment and all relevant constraints contributes to the pilot's situation
awareness, while the depiction of the planned path and its constraints allows the pilot to control or monitor the aircraft
with high precision. This paper starts with an overview of the potential opportunities provided by synthetic vision
technology. A distinction is made between the presentation domain and the function domain. In the presentation
domain, the benefits are obtained from making the invisible visible. In the function domain, benefits are obtained from
the possibility to integrate data from the synthetic vision system into other functions. The paper continues with a number
of examples of situation awareness support concepts which have been explored in the current research. After this, the
potential contribution of synthetic vision technology to the manual control task is discussed and it is indicated how these
potential advantages will be explored in the next research phase.
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