PROVIDING A DESCRIPTION OF AIRCRAFT INTENT

• US 20140336932A1
• Filed: 04/30/2014
• Published: 11/13/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Original Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Inventors: Frontera, Guillermo, Leones, Javier Lopez, Magana, Enrique Juan Casado, Besada, Juan
• Granted Patent: US 9,135,828 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/528
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 5/003 Flight plan management
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 5/0034 Assembly of a flight plan

Abstract

The present invention provides a computer-implemented method of generating an aircraft intent description expressed in a formal language that provides an unambiguous four-dimensional description of an aircraft'"'"'s intended motion and configuration during a period of flight. A flight intent description is parsed to provide instances of flight intent that span a flight segment, the flight segments together spanning the period of flight. The parsed flight intent is enriched with objectives and constraints according to user preferences, operational context and aircraft performance. The resulting enriched flight intent is converted into a parametric aircraft intent description by ensuring that each flight segment closes all associated degrees of freedom of motion and of configuration of the aircraft. At least some instances of aircraft intent contain a parameter range, and the method further comprises optimising the parametric aircraft intent by determining an optimal value for the parameter of each parameter range.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of generating an aircraft intent description expressed in a formal language that provides an unambiguous four dimensional description of an aircraft'"'"'s intended motion and configuration during a period of flight, comprising:

obtaining, by an intent generation infrastructure, a flight intent description corresponding to a flight plan spanning the period of the flight;

ensuring, by the intent generation infrastructure, that the flight intent description is parsed to provide instances of flight intent, wherein each of the instances of the flight intent is spanning a flight segment, and wherein the flight segments together span the period of the flight;

for each flight segment, generating, by the intent generation infrastructure, an associated flight segment intent dataset that comprises at least one of at least one instance of the flight intent and at least one instance of open aircraft intent, wherein each of the at least one instance of the open aircraft intent describes the aircraft'"'"'s motion in at least one degree of freedom of motion;

enriching, by the intent generation infrastructure, the flight intent description to generate an enriched flight intent description by using user preferences;

enriching, by the intent generation infrastructure, the enriched flight intent description to generate a further enriched flight intent description by using operational context;

enriching, by the intent generation infrastructure, the further enriched flight intent description to generate a still further enriched flight intent description by using aircraft performance;

completing, by the intent generation infrastructure, the instances of the open aircraft intent to form a parametric aircraft intent description; and

optimizing, by the intent generation infrastructure, the parametric aircraft intent description to generate a fully closed aircraft intent description.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the enriching the flight intent description to generate an enriched flight intent description by using user preferences comprises:

comparing the flight segment intent datasets with at least one of at least one constraint and at least one objective stored in a user preferences database,

identifying at least one of the at least one constraint and the at least one objective that are relevant to the flight segment intent datasets, and

enriching, according to a user preferences enrichment strategy, the flight segment intent datasets with information describing at least one of the at least one constraint and the at least one objective, thereby providing the enriched flight intent description.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the user preferences database has stored therein objectives that comprise information describing operational preferences.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the identifying the at least one objective that is relevant to the flight segment intent datasets comprises identifying objectives associated with the aircraft.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the enriching the enriched flight intent description to generate a further enriched flight intent description by using operational context comprises:

comparing the flight segment intent datasets with at least one of a least one constraint and at least one objective stored in an operational context database,

identifying at least one of the at least one constraint and the at least one objective that are relevant to the flight segment intent datasets, and

enriching, according to an operational context enrichment strategy, the flight segment intent datasets with information describing at least one of the at least one constraint and the at least one objective, thereby providing the further enriched flight intent description.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the operational context database has stored therein constraints that comprise restrictions on flying within an airspace.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the identifying the at least one constraint that is relevant to the flight segment intent datasets comprises identifying only those constraints affecting airspace though which the aircraft will pass during the corresponding flight segment.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the enriching the further enriched flight intent description to generate a still further enriched flight intent description by using aircraft performance comprises:

comparing the flight segment intent datasets with at least one of at least one constraint and at least one objective stored in an aircraft performance database,

identifying at least one of the at least one constraint and the at least one objective that are relevant to the flight segment intent datasets, and

enriching the flight segment intent datasets with information describing at least one of the at least one constraint and the at least one objective, thereby providing the still further enriched flight intent description.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the completing the instances of the open aircraft intent to form a parametric aircraft intent description comprises:

converting the instances of the open aircraft intent within the flight segment intent datasets into instances of parametric aircraft intent by identifying the flight segment intent datasets where not all degrees of freedom are closed,

completing the flight segment intent datasets where not all degrees of freedom are closed by at least one of adding and amending at least one of the instances of aircraft intent to close all degrees of freedom by selecting a completion strategy from a plurality of stored completion strategies and at least one of adding and amending at least one of the instances of the aircraft intent corresponding to the completion strategy that is selected, and

collating the flight segment intent datasets, thereby providing a fully closed parametric aircraft intent description for the period of the flight expressed in a formal language, and wherein the adding at least one of the instances of the aircraft intent includes providing a parameter range, thereby forming the parametric aircraft intent description.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the optimizing the parametric aircraft intent description to generate a fully closed aircraft intent description comprises:

determining an optimal value for each parameter of each parameter range in the parametric aircraft intent description according to an optimisation strategy, thereby generating the fully closed aircraft intent description.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein if the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all objectives and constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing optimisation loops comprising iteratively repeatedly optimising the parametric aircraft intent description according to alternative optimisation strategies until the fully closed aircraft intent description is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein if, after performing the optimisation loops, the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing completion loops comprising iteratively repeatedly completing the instances of the open aircraft intent according to alternative completion strategies, and

during each iteration of each of the completion loops, performing the optimisation loops until the fully closed aircraft intent is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein if, after performing the completion loops, the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing operational context loops comprising iteratively repeatedly enriching the enriched flight intent description to generate the further enriched flight intent description by using the operational context according to alternative operational context enrichment strategies followed by enriching the further enriched flight intent description to generate the still further enriched flight intent description by using the aircraft performance, and

during each iteration of each of the operational context loops, performing the completion loops until the fully closed aircraft intent description is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein if, after performing the operational context loops, the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing user preferences loops comprising iteratively repeatedly enriching the flight intent description to generate the enriched flight intent description by using the user preferences according to alternative user preferences enrichment strategies, and

during each iteration of each of the user preferences loops, performing the operational context loops until the fully closed aircraft intent description is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein if the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all objectives and constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing completion loops comprising iteratively repeatedly completing the instances of the open aircraft intent according to alternative completion strategies, and

during each iteration of each of the completion loops, performing optimising loops until the fully closed aircraft intent is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein if, after performing the completion loops, the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing operational context loops comprising iteratively repeatedly enriching the enriched flight intent description to generate the further enriched flight intent description by using the operational context according to alternative operational context enrichment strategies followed by enriching the further enriched flight intent description to generate the still further enriched flight intent description by using the aircraft performance, and

during each iteration of each of the operational context loops, performing the completion loops until the fully closed aircraft intent description is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein if, after performing the operational context loops, the fully closed aircraft intent description cannot be generated to fulfil all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description, the method further comprises:

performing user preferences loops comprising iteratively repeatedly enriching the flight intent description to generate the enriched flight intent description by using the user preferences according to alternative user preferences enrichment strategies, and

during each iteration of each of the user preferences loops, performing the operational context loops until the fully closed aircraft intent description is generated that fulfils all of the objectives and the constraints contained in the still further enriched flight intent description.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the completing the instances of the open aircraft intent comprises:

identifying completion strategies by degrees of freedom they influence, and

selecting one of the completion strategies to close a degree of freedom in the identified flight segment from the completion strategies identified to influence the degree of freedom;

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the completing the instances of the open aircraft intent comprises:

identifying the completion strategies by a phase of the flight to which they apply, and

selecting one of the completion strategies to close a degree of freedom from the completion strategies identified to influence the degree of freedom and identified to apply to the phase of the flight associated with the identified flight segment.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein the optimising the parametric aircraft intent description comprises determining optimal values by:

generating initial parameter values according to a optimisation strategy, thereby forming a model aircraft intent description;

calculating a trajectory from the model aircraft intent description;

calculating a merit function value for the trajectory using a merit function; and

repeating iterations of amending the parameter values, calculating the resulting trajectory and calculating the resulting merit function value to determine whether the fully closed aircraft intent description is improved, thereby optimising the parameter values by improving the merit function value.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises calculating a trajectory for a period of the flight from the fully closed aircraft intent description.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the method further comprises one of causing the aircraft to fly at the trajectory and comparing the trajectory with trajectories of other aircraft to identify conflicts.

23. A system for generating an aircraft intent description expressed in a formal language that provides an unambiguous four dimensional description of an aircraft'"'"'s intended motion and configuration during a period of flight, comprising:

a user preferences database;

an operational context database;

an aircraft performance database; and

an intent generation infrastructure configured;

to obtain a flight intent description corresponding to a flight plan spanning the period of the flight,

to ensure that the flight intent description is parsed to provide instances of flight intent, wherein each of the instances of the flight intent is spanning a flight segment, and wherein the flight segments together span the period of the flight,

to generate, for each flight segment, an associated flight segment intent dataset that comprises at least one of at least one instance of the flight intent and at least one instance of open aircraft intent, wherein each of the at least one instance of the open aircraft intent describes the aircraft'"'"'s motion in at least one degree of freedom of motion,

to enrich the flight intent description to generate an enriched flight intent description by using user preferences by using the user preferences database,

to enrich the enriched flight intent description to generate a further enriched flight intent description by using operational context by using the operational context database,

to enrich the further enriched flight intent description to generate a still further enriched flight intent description by using aircraft performance by using the aircraft performance database,

to complete the instances of the open aircraft intent to form a parametric aircraft intent description, and

to optimize the parametric aircraft intent description to generate a fully closed aircraft intent description.