Search Results

A study of the cockpit information system architecture of current single-engine single-pilot aircraft was performed to establish a baseline for the evaluation of the reliability of new cockpit systems being developed through the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) program. That study defines a “typical” General Aviation (GA) cockpit information system architecture consisting of 38 components making up 32 subsystems. It also developed a reliability (fault tree) model for the system and utilized a proprietary analysis tool to compute system reliability. Fault tree reliability models have gained wide acceptance since their introduction in the 1960’s to analyze the probability of success of military defense systems. Fault trees use logic gates to express the relationships between failures of the components and resulting failures of subsystems and of the system.

In recent years, an extensive effort supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been undertaken to rejuvenate the declining general aviation (GA) industry in the United States. One area of emphasis is in the development of advanced flight systems capable of simplifying the operation of GA aircraft in all weather conditions, opening new markets to the GA industry by making viable the use of private aircraft as transportation. Presented herein is a description of the design and plan for proof of concept of a state estimation system utilizing a low-cost distributed sensor array. This system will be used as the primary source of information for a decoupled flight control system on a ¼ scale remotely piloted model aircraft named Aladdin, an entry in a student design competition sponsored by NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), and the Air Force.