Assisted turbulence EFB interaction
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorSamantha A. Schwartz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present disclosure provides a turbulence management system for providing suggestions to a pilot that mitigate the effects of turbulence. These suggestions can be output to the pilot using an EFB. As mentioned above, an EFB can be communicatively coupled to a FMS such that the EFB has access to the data in the FMS. From the pilot's interactions with the FMS, the EFB can identify the pilot's intent such as landing, taking off, plotting a course change, changing altitude, maintaining a cruising altitude, etc. Once the intent is known, the EFB can output a suggestion to the pilot that satisfies the intent, but mitigates the harmful effects of turbulence. In one aspect, this suggestion is generated using the flight plant and aircraft metrics available from the FMS.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- receiving, at a portable device, from a flight management system (FMS) of an aircraft, pilot input that was previously provided to the FMS, wherein the FMS is external to, and wirelessly connected to, the portable device;
- inferring, at the portable device, pilot intent in response to the pilot input received from the FMS, wherein the pilot intent is a desired action the pilot wants the aircraft to perform as selected by the pilot via the pilot input, wherein inferring the pilot intent comprises mapping the pilot input to at least one of a plurality of pilot intents selected by pilots included within a table;
- receiving, at the portable device, an indication of turbulence corresponding to the aircraft from a source external from the portable device;
- receiving, at the portable device, aircraft metrics from the FMS;
- preventing the pilot from entering an erroneous selection via the pilot input, wherein said preventing comprises tracking movement of a hand or a finger to determine a position of the hand or the finger relative to a screen displaying a graphical user interface, and maintaining a spatial relationship of the hand or the finger to the screen during turbulent motions by adjusting the graphical user interface;
- and
- after inferring pilot intent:
- determining, in real time, at the portable device, a suggestion based on the aircraft metrics to mitigate the effects of the turbulence while still satisfying the pilot intent;
- and
- outputting the suggestion to a pilot using the portable device.
A portable device, comprising:
- a display;
- and
- a turbulence manager, configured to:
- receive, at a portable device, from a flight management system (FMS) of an aircraft, pilot input that was previously provided to the FMS, wherein the FMS is external to, and wirelessly connected to, the portable device;
- infer at the portable device, pilot intent in response to the pilot input received from the FMS, wherein the pilot intent is a desired action the pilot wants the aircraft to perform as selected by the pilot via the pilot input, wherein inferring the pilot intent comprises mapping pilot input to at least one of a plurality of pilot intents selected by pilots included within a table;
- receive, at the portable device, an indication of turbulence corresponding to the aircraft from a source external from the portable device;
- receive aircraft metrics from the FMS;
- prevent the pilot from entering an erroneous selection via the pilot input by tracking movement of a hand or a finger to determine a position of the hand or the finger relative to a screen displaying a graphical user interface, and maintaining a spatial relationship of the hand or the finger to the screen during turbulent motions by adjusting the graphical user interface;
- and
- after inferring pilot intent:
- determine, in real-time, a suggestion to mitigate the effects of the turbulence while still satisfying the pilot intent based on the aircraft metrics, and
- output the suggestion to a pilot using the display.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising computer readable program code, the computer readable program code, when executed by a processor, performs an operation, the operation comprising:
- receiving, at a portable device, from a flight management system (FMS) of an aircraft, pilot input that was previously provided to the FMS, wherein the FMS is external to, and wirelessly connected to, the portable device;
- inferring, at the portable device, pilot intent in response to the pilot input received from the FMS, wherein the pilot intent is a desired action the pilot wants the aircraft to perform as selected by the pilot via the pilot input, wherein inferring pilot the intent comprises mapping the pilot input to at least one of a plurality of pilot intents selected by pilots included within a table;
- receiving, at the portable device, an indication of turbulence corresponding to the aircraft from a source external from the portable device;
- receiving, at the portable device, aircraft metrics from the FMS;
- preventing the pilot from entering an erroneous selection via the pilot input, wherein said preventing comprises tracking movement of a hand or a finger to determine a position of the hand or the finger relative to a screen displaying a graphical user interface, and maintaining a spatial relationship of the hand or the finger to the screen during turbulent motions by adjusting the graphical user interface;
- and
- after inferring pilot intent:
- determining, in real-time, at the portable device, a suggestion to mitigate the effects of the turbulence while still satisfying the pilot intent based on the aircraft metrics;
- and
- outputting the suggestion to a pilot using the portable device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.