Intelligent terrain avoidance agent for General Aviation Free Flight
Abstract
In order to reduce the workload of Air Traffic Controllers, a new concept called Free Flight has emerged for General Aviation. This system takes the load off of the air traffic controller and puts the responsibility on the pilot. In order to help the pilot handle this responsibility, a hierarchical agent system is under development. This system will take information from traffic, weather, and terrain to determine a safe and efficient flight path. The terrain agent in this system must avoid Controlled Flight into Terrain. A simplistic conditional logic model was created and tested on a two-dimensional terrain slice. Then this algorithm was implemented with the dynamics of a Commander 700, a twin-engine general aviation aircraft. This algorithm was found to satisfy minimum altitude requirements and safely navigate the aircraft over the terrain conflicts for a simple terrain model. Further work, however, should be explored on adapting the algorithm for three-dimensions, testing on actual terrain, and implementing the terrain agent with the weather, traffic, and executive agents in this system.
Description
Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to digital@library.tamu.edu, referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 24).
Citation
Gesting, Paul (2003). Intelligent terrain avoidance agent for General Aviation Free Flight. Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2003 -Fellows -Thesis -G453.