Long-Range, In-Flight 3D Trajectory Re-Planning with Airborne E

Ryan S.Y. Young and Kristen M. Jerome

Abstract:	When FMS (Flight Management System) is coupled with an Autopilot, it can guide the aircraft to follow the active flight plan. Due to unforeseen events such as weather hazards and pop-up threats, the active flight plan may need to be modified in-flight to guide aircraft away from pop-up hazards. Most of current FMSs have the auto routing capability to automatically re-plan a new flight plan in-flight upon pilot request. However, the auto routing functions in FMSs usually re-plan a new path based solely on pre-stored navigation waypoints without consideration of terrain and pop-up hazards. To enhance the survivability of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), military users are starting to impose new auto routing requirements on FMS or MCS (Mission Computer System) to enable UAVs to perform active threat avoidance in a timely manner, while ensuring the safety of the aircraft. The real-time auto router will automatically generate a safe and flyable 3D flight plan and present it to pilots controlling UAVs for approval well before pop-up threats are encountered. Therefore, it increases the survivability of the unmanned aircraft. In this paper, we propose a real-time auto router, named as Airborne E*, that can efficiently and accurately modify the active flight plan to avoid pop-up threats when it determines these threats will endanger the safety of the aircraft.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 28 - 30, 2008 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	497 - 507
Cite this article:	Young, Ryan S.Y., Jerome, Kristen M., "Long-Range, In-Flight 3D Trajectory Re-Planning with Airborne E," Proceedings of the 2008 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2008, pp. 497-507.
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