Method and system for ensuring the reliability of data used to pilot an aircraft
AssigneeSextant Avionique
InventorsCatherine Boiteau, Roger Parus
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The disclosure relates to systems for piloting aircraft. Equations of the movements of the aircraft are used for computing, in a computer, of the first and second derivatives parameters V.sub.p, .PHI..sub.v, .sigma..sub.a, .beta..sub.v, .alpha., .PHI..sub.v, .sigma..sub.a, .beta..sub.v, of the parameters V.sub.p, .PHI..sub.v, .sigma..sub.a, .beta..sub.v, .alpha. of the movement of the aircraft, and the values thus computed are compared with those computed by means of the values of said parameters V.sub.p, .PHI..sub.v, .sigma..sub.a, .beta..sub.v, .alpha. at the instants t, (t+dt) and (t+2dt). An alarm signal (circuit 23) is generated if equality is not verified to a given precision.
Claims24
Method for ensuring the reliability of the data used to pilot an aircraft, comprising the steps of:
- (a) obtaining data corresponding, firstly, to parameters given by sensors and, secondly, to parameters indicative of navigation that are given by a computing device and presented to the pilot, either by means of onboard instruments or by means of a symbol generator associated with a display device giving a display in the form of synthesis images that include one or more reticles as well as alphanumerical characters;
- (b) detecting and recognizing said synthesis images so as to obtain digital signals indicative thereof;
- (c) computing one or more navigation parameters and/or sensor parameters from said digital signals;
- (d) comparing said computed parameters with values from the group consisting of the same parameters given by said computation device or with values from the sensors so as to detect inconsistencies between the compared parameters;
- (e) generating an alarm signal when one or more of said inconsistencies go beyond a determined threshold;
- wherein said step (b) of detecting and recognizing includes the steps of:
- recording one image of the screen of the display device;
- analyzing said recorded image so as to identify reticles and alphanumerical characters, and
- determining the digital values of data presented to the pilot.
System for ensuring the reliability of the data used to pilot an aircraft, said data corresponding, firstly, to parameters given by the sensors and, secondly, to parameters indicative of navigation that are given by a computing device and presented to the pilot, either by means of onboard instruments or by means of a symbol generator associated with a display device giving a display in the form of synthesis images that include one or more reticles as well as alphanumerical characters, comprising:
- means for providing digital signals that represent piloting data that are presented to the pilot on the display device;
- a first computer to compute one or more navigation parameters from said digital signals;
- a first comparator to compare values of the navigation parameters given by the first computer with values of same parameters given by the computing device or by the instruments, and to generate an alarm signal when the result of the comparison indicates that the compared values are different beyond a certain threshold;
- a second computer to compute one or more sensor parameters from the values of the navigation parameters given either by the computation device or by the first parameter, and
- a second comparator to compare the values of the sensor parameters given by the second computer with those given by the corresponding sensors or the onboard instruments and to generate an alarm signal when the result of the comparison indicates that the compared values are different beyond a certain threshold.
A method for ensuring reliability of data used to pilot an aircraft, said method comprising the steps of:
- obtaining information from sensors indicative of characteristics of the aircraft;
- providing a computational device, connected to outputs of the sensors, to compute a computational result based on said sensor outputs;
- displaying information indicative of said computational result to the pilot;
- providing a reverse computational device, in a path between said computational device and a display, and which receives an output of said computational device and performs a reverse computation on said output to provide a result which should be the same as the input to the computational device;
- comparing the result of said reverse computation with the value input;
- forming an alarm indication when the results of said comparing step vary by more that a predetermined amount.
An apparatus for checking data used to pilot an aircraft, comprising:
- a plurality of sensors for producing information indicative of characteristics of the aircraft;
- a computational device, connected to receive information from the sensors, to provide a computational result based on outputs of said sensor;
- a display device, which displays said computational result to the pilot;
- a reverse computational device, coupled in a path between said computational device and said display device, and which receives an output of said computational device and performs a reverse computation on said output, which reverse computation is an inverse of a computation of carried out by said computational device, to provide a result which should be the same as the sensor outputs that are input to the computational device;
- a comparator which receives and compares a result of said reverse computation with an input thereto;
- and
- an alarm indication device, which indicates when the results vary by more than a predetermined amount.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.