Providing a description of aircraft intent

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

• A processor;
• A storage medium comprising instructions thereon, that when executed by said processor, cause the processor to:
• obtain a description of flight intent corresponding to a flight plan spanning a period of flight;
• ensure that the flight intent description is parsed to provide instances of flight intent, the instances of flight intent spanning a flight segment with the flight segments together spanning the period of flight;
• for a flight segment, generate an associated flight segment description that comprises one or more instances of flight intent, wherein the instances of flight intent provide a description of the aircraft's motion in at least one degree of freedom of motion thereby closing the associated at least one degree of freedom of motion and/or provides a description of the aircraft's configuration to close at least one degree of freedom of configuration;
• compare flight segment descriptions with constraints and/or objectives stored in a database and identify constraints and/or objectives that are relevant to the flight segment description;
• enrich the flight, segment descriptions with information describing the identified constraints and/or objectives relevant to the flight segment description thereby providing an enriched flight intent;
• and
• convert the enriched flight intent, into aircraft intent by ensuring that the flight segment descriptions close all degrees of freedom of the aircraft during the period of flight by identifying flight segments where not all degrees of freedom are closed and completing the identified flight segments by adding one or more instances of flight intent to close all degrees of freedom, and collating the flight segment descriptions thereby providing description of aircraft intent for the period of flight expressed in a formal language, wherein adding one or more instances of flight intent comprises selecting a strategy from a plurality of stored strategies and adding an instance of flight intent corresponding to that strategy, wherein the strategies are identified by the degrees of freedom they influence, and a strategy is selected to close a degree of freedom from the strategies identified to influence that degree of freedom, and the strategies are identified by a phase of flight to which they apply, and a strategy is selected to close a degree of freedom from the strategies identified to influence that degree of freedom and identified to apply to the phase of flight associated with the flight segment.

An aircraft comprising:

• A processor;
• A storage medium comprising instructions thereon, that when executed by said processor, cause the processor to:
• obtain a description of flight intent corresponding to a flight plan spanning a period of flight;
• ensure that the flight intent description is parsed to provide instances of flight intent, the instances of flight intent spanning a flight segment with the flight segments together spanning the period of flight;
• for a flight segment, generate an associated flight segment description that comprises one or more instances of flight intent, wherein the instances of flight intent provide a description of the aircraft's motion in at least one degree of freedom of motion thereby closing the associated at least one degree of freedom of motion and/or provides a description of the aircraft's configuration to close at least one degree of freedom of configuration;
• compare flight segment descriptions with constraints and/or objectives stored in a database and identify constraints and/or objectives that are relevant to the flight segment description;
• enrich the flight segment descriptions with information describing the identified constraints and/or objectives relevant to the flight segment description thereby providing an enriched flight intent;
• convert the enriched flight intent into aircraft intent by ensuring that the flight segment descriptions close all degrees of freedom of the aircraft during the period of flight;
• and
• calculate a trajectory for the period of flight from the aircraft intent and causing the aircraft to fly that trajectory;
• and
• check that the aircraft intent meets one or more constraints pertaining to the aircraft and, if not;
• for the flight segments where constraints are not met, return to the flight description derived by parsing the obtained flight intent, completing the flight segment by selecting an alternative strategy from a plurality of stored strategies and adding an instance of flight intent corresponding to that strategy to close all degrees of freedom, collate the flight segment descriptions thereby providing an alternative description of aircraft intent for the period of flight expressed in a formal language, and repeat the step of checking that the aircraft intent meets one or more constraints pertaining to the aircraft.

A tangible computer readable storage medium having recorded thereon instructions that, when executed on a computer to cause the computer to:

• obtain a description of flight intent corresponding to a flight plan spanning a period of flight;
• ensure that the flight intent description is parsed to provide instances of flight intent, the instances of flight intent spanning a flight segment with the flight segments together spanning the period of flight;
• for a flight segment, generate an associated flight segment description that comprises one or more instances of flight intent, wherein the instances of flight intent provide a description of the aircraft's motion in at least one degree of freedom of motion thereby closing the associated at least one degree of freedom of motion and/or provides a description of the aircraft's configuration to close at least one degree of freedom of configuration;
• compare flight segment descriptions with constraints and/or objectives stored in a database and identify constraints and/or objectives that are relevant to the flight segment description;
• enrich the flight segment descriptions with information describing the identified constraints and/or objectives relevant to the flight segment description thereby providing an enriched flight intent;
• and convert the enriched flight intent into aircraft intent by ensuring that the flight segment descriptions close all degrees of freedom of the aircraft during the period of flight by identifying flight segments where not all degrees of freedom are closed and completing the identified flight segments by adding one or more instances of flight intent to close all degrees of freedom, and collating the flight segment descriptions thereby providing description of aircraft intent for the period of flight expressed in a formal language;
• wherein adding one or more instances of flight intent comprises selecting a strategy from a plurality of stored strategies and adding an instance of flight intent corresponding to that strategy, wherein a strategy is selected based upon an identified constraint associated with the flight segment and/or a comparison to the flight intent of other flight segments.