Developing and Validating Cockpit Interventions based on Cognitive Modeling

Modern commercial aircraft use extremely complex and sophisticated flight instrumentation systems that present training concerns for the aviation industry and collegiate aviation programs. The authors sampled 42 four-year collegiate flight-training programs to determine their current program emphasis on "glass cockpit" training and plans for curriculum enhancements in that area. Although nearly fifty percent of sampled program administrators believe instruction in flight automation is critical to the success of their graduates, most cite cost of materials and competing curriculum priorities as reasons to defer such instruction to future employers. The authors suggest that program enhancements are within the reach of modern college aviation programs and offer suggestions for three different levels of glass cockpit training.

The introduction of automated flight control and management systems have made possible aircraft designs that sacrifice arodynamic stability in order to incorporate stealth technology intro their shape, operate more efficiently, and are highly maneuverable. Therefore, modern flight management systems are reliant on multiple redundant sensors to monitor and control the rotations of the aircraft. To this end, a novel distributed quaternion Kalman filtering algorithm is developed for tracking the rotation and orientation of an aircraft in the three-dimensional space. The algorithm is developed to distribute computation among the sensors in a manner that forces them to consent to a unique solution while being robust to sensor and link failure, a desirable characteristic for flight management systems. In addition, the underlying quaternion-valued state space model allows to avoid problems associated with gimbal lock. The performance of the developed algorithm is verified through simulations.

Aviation accidents still hit the news even though the growth of technological advancement on commercial aircraft avionic systems has been impressive. Hence, one of the objectives of this study is to plot the time-based graph of commercial aviation accidents, with direct consequence from avionics instrumentations in the period of two decades, from 1996 to 2015. The second objective is to analyse two main aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, in determining specific model of its kind that significantly involved in avionics-related instrumentation as one of the contributing factors that leads to the incidents or accidents. The third objective is to identify which avionics system that most frequently involved in aviation incidents, for both manufacturers. The final objective is to examine the main probable cause that has the highest percentage in those accidents within the said time frame. The method of collecting data is by doing comparative analysis from reliable official websites of four well-known bodies such as National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Aviation Safety Network and Flight Safety Foundation. Results show that misfortune occurrences are directly associated with avionics within the said two decades, which mainly involved Autopilot and Flight Management System (FMS) (14% each), meanwhile the aircraft model Boeing 737 carries the highest percentage of avionics-related incidents or accidents. Nonetheless, 67% of the misfortune occurrences within the scope of study are mainly due to human error instead of technology.

This paper presents a SOA and cloud computing based architecture for the distributed simulation of advanced flight management system (FMS). The architecture is designed to facilitate the fast simulation, validation and evaluation of different FMS system designs and functionalities with customized system configurations and widely varying aircraft equipage levels under various operation conditions. It is also intended to accommodate the potential evolutionary extensions of new avionics concepts and functionalities such as the future CNS/ATM and 4-D trajectory based technologies. To address the requirements of flexibility, scalability and reusability, the design of the simulation architecture takes advantage of the cloud computing and service oriented architecture (SOA) and the key enabling technologies are developed: simulation unit service encapsulation, simulation agent technology and simulation orchestration. Based on the proposed architecture associated technologies, the simulation components are encapsulated as services or accessed through agents, and the configuration of different FMS system frameworks and simulation tasks can be achieved through simulation orchestration. A prototype avionic simulation system that implements the SOA/cloud computing architecture is developed and illustrated with application cases. The applications demonstrate that the proposed architecture enables fast and scalable simulation of both existing and new FMS design and technologies.

Model-Driven Design (MDD) has proven to be a powerful technology to address the development of increasingly complex embedded systems. Beyond complexity itself, challenges come from the need to deal with parallelism and heterogeneity. System design must target different execution platforms with different OSs and HW resources, even bare-metal, support local and distributed systems, and integrate on top of these heterogeneous platforms multiple functional component coming from different sources (developed from scratch, legacy code and third-party code), with different behaviors operating under different models of computation and communication. Additionally, system optimization to improve performance, power consumption, cost, etc. requires analyzing huge lists of possible design solutions. Addressing these challenges require flexible design technologies able to support from a single-source model its architectural mapping to different computing resources, of different kind and in different platforms. Traditional MDD methods and tools typically rely on fixed elements, which makes difficult their integration under this variability. For example, it is unlikely to integrate in the same system legacy code with a third-party component. Usually some re-coding is required to enable such interconnection. This paper proposes a UML/MARTE system modeling methodology able to address the challenges mentioned above by improving flexibility and scalability. This approach is illustrated and demonstrated on a flight management system. The model is flexible enough to be adapted to different architectural solutions with a minimal effort by changing its underlying Model of Computation and Communication (MoCC). Being completely platform independent, from the same model it is possible to explore various solutions on different execution platforms.

This review addresses the development of computational models in educational psychology. First, we generally explained computational models and their background. Second, we searched academic articles relating to computational models in psychology and other fields. The search revealed that, on the one hand, international journals in behavioral or cognitive sciences include several articles relating to computational models, and the number is increasing in general psychology journals. On the other hand, domestic and international educational psychology journalsscarcely have relating papers. Third, we described the current challenges in educational psychology and how the ideas and analytical method on computational models would contribute to overcome these challenges.

In order to investigate and exploit advanced flight management system with complete functions, provide applicable and reliable performance data for optimal trajectory search, data structure requirements of performance database of flight management system are presented, including the structure of aerodynamic data ,engine performance data and operation data. The whole authentic performance data is acquired by integrating the performance data of flight simulator in the second phase of 985 projects and the flight manual. Based on the former performance data, combining the thrust method, particle swarm optimization algorithm and the energy-state method, the performance data is transferred into equal energy-height curves which can be more applicable for optimal trajectory search. Based on the processed performance data, the performance model is built on the basis of Microsoft Visual C++ and MATLAB/SIMULINK. The running results of the flight management system program indicate the method used to exploit performance database of flight simulator prototype system is effective and feasible.

Projected requirements for automatic dependent surveillance (ADS) include the downlinking of certain aircraft flight parameters periodically and upon command from the ground. This will require a primary source of the data such as a flight management system (FMS) and, of course, a radio datalink. This paper provides a description of an existing system that could fulfil much of the interim airborne ADS equipment requirements by using GPS/OMEGA/INS/ACARS for existing aircraft which are not equipped with, or envisioned to be equipped with, SATCOM, FMS or IRS.

4D-trajectory-based operations (where D stands for dimensional) are proposed by SESAR and NGATS as the fundamental cornerstones of air traffic management (ATM) system improvements of the future. Various research initiatives such as PHARE (M. Van Gool and H. Schroter, 1999) have long described and prototyped these ideas of integrated air-ground ATM. However, because the broad implementation of this concept requires significant harmonized development of both air-and ground-based technology, progress has been limited. Nonetheless, the avionics industry has implemented initial capabilities to manage the fourth dimension, i.e. time, called required time of arrival (RTA). The paper summarizes the results obtained from a EUROCONTROL study on the availability, characteristics and performance of the required time of arrival (RTA) function in existing flight management systems (FMS). The RTA study is first discussed in the context of ATM, proposing some guiding premises as to how the time management function should be developed. As a consequence, the RTA study focused on performance during descent, using different FMS modes. A brief discussion of related EUROCONTROL projects has also been added. Test results from a number of sessions on Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 flight simulators are then presented. The evaluation included an assessment of the impact of wind on RTA, as well as some observations about the human machine interface aspects. Lastly, conclusions and recommendations for further development are proposed.

This paper describes a trajectory-based arrival management concept that integrates the use of advanced flight management systems (FMS) and advanced air traffic management (ATM) automation tools. This concept, termed the 3D path concept, is a key near-term step that enables trajectory-based operations in a voice communications environment. When applied to arrival management, the ground-based automation system computes an optimal arrival schedule at the meter fixes and runways and selects trajectories that meet the schedule and ensure separation. These 4-D trajectories are cleared prior to top of descent (TOD) and provide necessary delay in the form of cruise and descent speed changes, combined with lateral path adjustments when needed. The trajectories are flown by the aircraft's FMS with accurate navigation performance and optimized vertical profiles, which is generally not feasible today due to the use of open-ended vectors. The analysis of the performance of this arrival management concept using the Boeing trajectory analysis and modeling environment (TAME) is presented in this paper. TAME uses the eurocontrol base of aircraft data (BADA) to represent aircraft performance for the fast-time simulation. The 3D path concept is applied to operations in the Houston airport area, and arrivals into Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) are modeled using TAME. The results illustrate the influence of path and speed discretization, wind, trajectory prediction and navigation performance. Additionally, results showing the overall performance of the IAH arrival flow using 4 and 6 arrival meter fixes are presented, showing the increased airport throughput that can be achieved when airspace constraints are removed.

The work is devoted to the development of a human-machine interface (HMI) of the decision support system for the problem of four-dimensional navigation. As part of the work, the analysis of the functionality of modern flight management systems, which is designed to solve the problem of four-dimensional navigation, was carried out. The problems that arise during flights along the four-dimensional navigation routes are determined, and the insufficiency of the existing functionality of modern flight management systems for solving these problems is substantiated. The paper proposes the functionality of the decision support system as an addition to the functionality of the flight management systems, as well as the organization of the HMI of the decision support system, which provides display of the necessary information for the decision-making process by the crew.

Why would highly skilled, well-trained pilots make errors that lead to accidents when they had safely completed many thousands of previous flights? The majority of all aviation accidents are attributed primarily to human error, but this is often misinterpreted as evidence of lack of skill, vigilance, or conscientiousness of the pilots. The Limits of Expertise is a fresh look at the causes of pilot error and aviation accidents, arguing that accidents can be understood only in the context of how the overall aviation system operates. The authors analyzed in great depth the 19 major U.S. airline accidents from 1991-2000 in which the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found crew error to be a causal factor. Each accident is reviewed in a separate chapter that examines events and crew actions and explores the cognitive processes in play at each step. The approach is guided by extensive evidence from cognitive psychology that human skill and error are opposite sides of the same coin. The book examines the ways in which competing task demands, ambiguity and organizational pressures interact with cognitive processes to make all experts vulnerable to characteristic forms of error. The final chapter identifies themes cutting across the accidents, discusses the role of chance, criticizes simplistic concepts of causality of accidents, and suggests ways to reduce vulnerability to these catastrophes. The authors' complementary experience allowed a unique approach to the study: accident investigation with the NTSB, cognitive psychology research both in the lab and in the field, enormous first-hand experience of piloting, and application of aviation psychology in both civil and military operations. This combination allowed the authors to examine and explain the domain-specific aspects of aviation operations and to extend advances in basic research in cognition to complex issues of human performance in the real world. Although The Limits of Expertise is directed to aviation operations, the implications are clear for understanding the decision processes, skilled performance and errors of professionals in many domains, including medicine.

This paper presents an integrated effort by the different universities in the state of Kansas on the development of an open source modular wireless avionics system for both fixed and rotary-wing aircraft. Development of hardware and software to enhance the airborne processing performance at a reduced price is discussed. Also discussed are a flight management system implemented on a fixed wing UAV and the software development and modeling of INS/GPS. Methods to incorporate the flight management system to the modular avionics system are presented. The paper also highlights the development of the dynamic model for UAV helicopters. The dynamic model will be used for the development of an automatic flight control system that will be integrated with the modular avionics systems. Various aspects of communication related problems are also discussed.

It is a reasonable question. Why would we want to go through the time and effort to integrate two different navigation systems? The simple answer is that we integrate multiple systems when no one system by itself will satisfy all the necessary requirements. More generally, we integrate multiple systems in order to construct a super-system that in some way outperforms any of the individual systems.We are going to be spending a lot of time developing the framework behind the Kalman filter and ultimately driving toward the goal of developing an architecture that will enable us to integrate multiple navigation systems into a single integrated unit. We will start off by looking at navigation system integration and consider some key issues along with goals and requirements. We will investigate subsystem characteristics and will look at some challenges to integration.Navigation engineers must be cognizant of the fact that their product is a component within a larger system. This larger system is typically a vehicle (specifically, a land, air, sea, or space vehicle). As I have told many students throughout my years of teaching: an inertial navigation system will not transport me from New York to Chicago. It will tell me where I am. It will tell me how fast I am going. It will tell me the current attitude of my vehicle and how fast it is turning. However, it will not answer the most basic navigation question that all drivers, pilots, and captains must answer in order to get where they want to go: Which way to steer?The position, velocity, and attitude information determined by the navigation system, in virtually every case, is handed off to another system. Frequently it is either a flight management system or a flight control system or some kind of display for the pilot (or driver or captain...). It is also possible that it may be pointing a sensor or a weapon or providing the position and velocity needed to process synthetic aperture radar images. In any case, the navigation system needs to provide its information in a form and with a quality that satisfies the needs of the downstream user or system.

This paper presents the conceptual development of advanced flight control systems (flight management systems), where the objective is to attain real-time identification, design, and controller reconfiguration. The identification and control methods developed use a complete nonlinear aircraft model derived from the Lagrange equations of motion. The generalized performance functional is employed. Using the Hamilton-Jacobi theory, bounded controllers are designed applying the first- and second-order necessary criteria for optimality. The sufficient conditions are studied to analyze stability of the closed-loop systems with bounded control. In particular, the admissibility concept, which is based on the Lyapunov stability theory, is used. It is shown that innovative procedures guarantee real-time identification, constrained optimization, and controller reconfiguration. The concept reported can be applied to advanced highly maneuverable aircraft, as well as to agile missiles and interceptors.