Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Vehicle control – guidance – operation – or indication – Aeronautical vehicle
Reexamination Certificate
1998-11-17
2001-07-10
Cuchlinski, Jr., William A. (Department: 3614)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Vehicle control, guidance, operation, or indication
Aeronautical vehicle
C360S005000, C360S031000, C073S489000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06259977
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
The invention relates generally to aircraft flight data analysis systems. More particularly, the invention relates to aircraft data analysis systems that make user-defined measurements on a set of flight data obtained from a variety of sources and post-flight measurement and trending analysis software that provide a user configurable measurement system for analyzing flight data from a variety of sources.
Data recorders on board modem aircraft record information about hundreds or thousands of operational parameters, such as ground speed, pitch and altitude at a rate of multiple times per second. The information thus collected is of great value to persons concerned with safety, aircraft maintenance, crew training, and other aspects of aircraft operation. However, the amount of information recorded during a single flight exceeds the analytical ability of even a skilled analyst. The amount of information collected from all the aircraft in a commercial fleet over a period of several months is staggering. Computer-assisted methods of analyzing flight data have been developed by airlines, government entities responsible for flight safety, and by others responsible for some aspect of aircraft operation. These computer assisted methods have to attempted to analyze the data for a number of purposes, including reducing accident rates and producing cost savings.
Traditional analysis has focused on sequentially searching recorded data from a single flight for an event or events of interest. An event is defined essentially as an out of tolerance instance where the value of one or more parameters exceeds acceptable limits as defined by safety considerations or the standard operating procedures of the aircraft operator. Existing flight data analysis systems operate by sequentially searching recorded data for a single flight for an event or events of interest and only generate a report (also called a “log”) if such an event occurred. However, it is often useful to know the normal range of a specific parameter over many flights, independently of whether or not an event has occurred. Information about normal ranges of a given value over many flights, where the normal range of the value is a function of actual operations rather than a specified number or limit, is not easily accessible using given methods of flight data analysis. It is also often useful to know the normal range of a specific parameter during multiple flights of a number of airplanes of the same type of aircraft also called a “fleet”). For example, it may be useful to know the average aircraft speed during selected time points during takeoff for multiple flights of a particular aircraft or for a particular type of aircraft. It may also be useful to know that same information for other aircraft within the same fleet. These and other types of analyses are not provided for in existing flight data analysis systems.
In addition, existing flight data analysis systems are not easily configured by users and instead often require software changes to be implemented by the software manufacturer whenever a user wants to perform a measurement not currently provided for in the software data analysis program. The user is generally not allowed to configure the needed measurement just prior to or at the time of the time of flight data analysis. This severely limits the capability of existing flight data analysis systems to evolve as the flight data analysis needs and parameters change.
Also, in existing flight data analysis systems, the analysis is specified separately for each fleet (aircraft type). This makes it difficult to compare the analysis results between different fleets (aircraft types). Additionally, the work of setting up the system must be repeated for each fleet (aircraft type).
SUMMARY
The present invention solves these problems by providing a computer implemented, hardware independent flight data analysis system and method that performs analysis on flight data from one or more flight data sources. The invention allows users to perform trending, characterization and statistical analyses on flight data information. This is possible because the flight data analysis measurements are performed independently of whether or not an event has occurred. The invention also provides for the saving of the flight data analysis results and allows further analysis of those results.
The present system and method permits is easily configurable by the user. It permits users to perform user-defined, fully configurable measurements utilizing any of more than sixty basic mathematical and logical operators included as building blocks. The user can also create additional basic operators. User-created measurements can be stored and automatically applied to new flight data or to the stored results of previous analyses.
To permit flexibility in performing analysis on the flight data, the invention incorporates a description language that allows the user to build user-defined measurement definitions in a fleet (aircraft type) independent manner. These user-defined measurement definitions may be expressed in terms of time points, intervals, measurements and events relative to the stream of data recorded by onboard recorders. This description language enable users to perform measurements that require nonsequential analysis of the sequential flight data file.
The present system and method also performs trending, characterization, and statistical analysis on databases containing collections of results of earlier analyses. In addition, the system the stores and manages pools of flight data from individual flights such that users can perform measurements upon that flight data for an indefinite period of time after completion of the flight. Data from a variety of aircraft types, from a variety of flight data recorders and from other sources of flight data can be analyzed by translating the data into fleet-independent terms, so that the performance of different fleets or different aircraft types can be compared. Users can choose to analyze the entire flight data file or can define a segment of the flight data file to be analyzed from the entire flight set of flight data.
The present invention comprises a computer program for post-flight data analysis of aircraft flight data comprising the steps of: using recorded flight data containing data for one or more flights of interest, analyzing the recorded flight data using user defined measurement definitions and saving the results for the flight of interest. The computer program further comprises repeating the analysis for different sets of user defined measurements and saving each result in a flight analysis data base. The user defined measurements may be defined by a user prior to analyzing the flight of interest. Alternatively, the user defined measurements may be stored in a measurement definition file. The recorded flight data is preprocessed and stored in a flight database. The preprocessing comprises segmenting the data into individual flights, identifying the phases of flight, deidentifying the individual flights and determining airport locations for take off and landing. These results may be stored in a flight database.
The user defined measurements may be selected from the group consisting of timepoint definitions, interval definitions, measurement definitions and event definitions.
The timepoint definitions may be selected from the group consisting of phase of flight timepoint, relative timepoint, dual defined timepoint, data defined timepoint and file defined timepoint. The timepoint definitions may comprise defining a timepoint relative to a phase of flight specified by the user. The timepoint definitions may also comprise a timepoint to be defined relative to a single selected timepoint. Alternatively, the timepoint definitions comprise a timepoint to be defined relative to first and second specified timepoints and the timepoint to be defined may be selected from the group consisting of: a timepoint at an earlier time than the first and second selected timepoints, a timepoint at a later time than
Kozman Ken S.
Mayer Thomas J.
Pineo Richard E.
Vamsi Katta M.
Austin Digital Inc.
Cuchlinski Jr. William A.
Donnelly Arthur D.
Taylor Russell Gail M
Taylor Russell & Russell
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