VIEWING DEVICE INTENDED FOR COMPREHENDING THE AERIAL ENVIRONMENT

• US 20100066564A1
• Filed: 11/27/2007
• Published: 03/18/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thales SA
• Original Assignee: Thales SA
• Inventors: Neto, Philippe, Filliatre, Eric
• Granted Patent: US 8,339,283 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/945
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 23/005 Flight directors indicating arrangements specially adapted for rotary gyroscopes G01C19/32

Abstract

Device for viewing the aerial environment for aircraft, including a display, a processor and memory configured to generate and to provide a first data processing resource, the data being a graphical representation of the aerial environment composed of colored zones, each color being associated with a danger level for the aircraft, said data comprising environmental data; and a second data processing resource for cartographic data. The device further comprises a graphical mixer to overlay the graphical representation arising from the environmental data onto a representation of the cartographic data on one viewing screen, each zone of a color of the representation of environmental data having a transparency coefficient dependent on the danger level.

Claims

1. A device for viewing an aerial environment for an aircraft, comprising:

a display screen;

a processor in communication with the display screen, the processor in communication with a memory,

wherein the memory is adapted to store;

a series of instructions executed by the processor to generate images;

a series of instructions executed by the processor to process environmental data, the environmental data comprising digitized data of an aerial environment from an angular sector on either side of a heading of the aircraft, said angular sector having a constant range and an origin point coincident with a reference point, the environmental data having a graphical representation comprising colored zones, wherein each color of the colored zones is associated with a respective danger level for the aircraft; and

a series of instructions executed by the processor to process cartographic data, wherein the cartographic data comprises digital terrain data,

wherein;

the device further comprises a graphical mixer to overlay the graphical representation of the environmental data onto a representation of the cartographic data on one viewing screen, wherein each zone of having a predetermined color has a transparency coefficient dependent on the danger level.

2. The viewing device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the reference point comprises a current position of the aircraft.

3. The viewing device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the reference point comprises a reference for calculating one of the environmental data and the cartographic data.

4. The viewing device as claimed in claim 1, wherein a digital representation of the environmental data is symmetric with respect to the heading of the aircraft.

5. The device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the angular sector comprises a plurality of radials, each radial having a range and a spread, with the reference point comprising a center, wherein a spacing between two adjacent radials is determined by a second angle substantially equal to half of the spread.

6. The device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the environmental data are discretized by the danger level.

7. The device as claimed in claim 6, wherein the danger zones are discretized as a function of a risk of collision of the aircraft.

8. The device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the environmental data comprise collision prediction data.

9. The device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the environmental data comprise meteorological data.

10. The graphical device as claimed in claim 1, wherein substantially total transparency is assigned to a zone having a lowest danger level, such that the zone is not displayed by the display screen.

11. The graphical device as claimed in claim 1, wherein substantially total opacity is assigned to a zone having a highest danger level.