Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Langley, Va., Research Center are evaluating the integration of a number of separate systems and techniques which, when combined, could achieve significant safety improvements in the approach and landing phase. These include synthetic vision, infrared sensing, terrain warning, weather radar, radio altimetry, differential GPS, head-up and head-down displays, “highway in the sky” presentations, multilateration, voice commands and other technologies. The project–part of NASA’s wider-ranging Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP)–aims under the agency’s 2000 strategic plan to reduce the fatal aircraft accident rate by 80 percent within 10 years and by 90 percent within 25 years.
All the systems are, of course, in varying degrees of use today, but several operate independently of the others, and it becomes the pilot’s task to mentally integrate their separate data and then make the right decisions. Under normal circumstances, this rarely poses a problem, but accident investigations have revealed cases in which overlooking just one key parameter has caused the loss of the aircraft. The researchers’ objective, therefore, is to develop ways to present the pilot with every piece of critical data relative to the current flight phase in an instantly assimilated form, while at the same time avoiding information overload. NASA synthetic vision system (SVS) project manager Dan Baize described the aim as being the creation of a “virtual VMC” environment under all weather conditions.
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