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Path planning, terrain avoidance and situation awareness system for general aviation

  • US 6,401,038 B2
  • Filed: 05/18/2001
  • Issued: 06/04/2002
  • Est. Priority Date: 06/28/1999
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A method of performing a real-time dynamic collision check comprising the steps of:

  • using Digitized Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) to generate a terrain model, said terrain model containing a set of nodes, each of the nodes containing four parameters I,J,K,S, the four parameters I,J,K,S being obtained by mapping each elevation peak point I,J,K of a DTED file into a 3-D locational code of a corresponding Oct-tree, parameters I,J,K defining 3-D coordinates of a space location, a scaling factor of the elevation being introduced with divides the terrain elevation into bands, and parameter K representing scaled elevation, wherein the nodes of said Oct-tree with equal scaled value of elevation occurring in a same quadrant of a corresponding quad-tree are merged and the scaling factor is non-linear or, beginning with a baseline instead of mean sea level, parameter S is a coverage area of a node and is added to represent the size of a respective node, said bit positions of the four parameters I,J,K,S being interleaved to form an integer representation of the respective node;

    using the terrain model to provide a navigation space;

    accessing and retrieving the terrain model to generate a terrain map;

    identifying a list of the nodes in the navigation space based on flight altitude;

    establishing a ground track for a flight path segment, said ground track including a list of the nodes on the terrain map; and

    determining whether a flight path segment is in conflict with a dangerous zone by searching each of the nodes of the ground track for the flight path segment against the list of nodes in the navigation space.

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