An Automated Emergency Airport and Off-Airport Landing Site Selector

We present a novel landing site selector capable of selecting suitable landing sites (airport and off-airport) for emergency landings. In a first step, information from several databases which includes, for instance, elevation data, is gathered by our system. Then, this information is processed in order to create a list of potential landing sites ranked according to several factors, such as the characteristics of the runway, the type of emergency or the current weather. A generic scenario and case studies have been defined in order to test the landing site selector, ultimately leading to a series of trajectories—generated with an emergency trajectory generator presented in previous publications—safely leading the aircraft to one of the landing sites chosen by our system.1The work presented in this paper has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 864771, corresponding to the SafeNcy project (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/864771). The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Clean Sky 2 JU members other than the Union. The opinions expressed herein reflect the authors view only. Under no circumstances shall the Clean Sky 2 JU be responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Aircraft Emergency Trajectory Design: A Fast Marching Method on a Triangular Mesh

International audienceIn this paper, an efficient algorithm to generate a short and safe trajectory for an aircraft in a situation of emergency is proposed. The algorithm is to be run on a Flight Management System, hence the computation performance, the size of the stored data and the quality of the solution are taken as primary stakes. The algorithm is based on a front propagation algorithm, the Fast Marching method. Fronts are propagated on a single glide slope, allowing the algorithm to provide a flyable trajectory in a very short time (a few seconds). The algorithm is tested in a mountainous environment, and both shortness and safeness are obtained in response to a critical emergency

SafeNcy - D4.1: Trajectory Generation Solution Description

This document provides a description of the automatic trajectory generation methodology. It describes the detailed modelling of the flight trajectory and the selection and ranking of the adopted methodology.Postprint (published version

A Fast and flexible emergency trajectory generator : enhancing emergency geometric planning with aircraft dynamics

We present an automated emergency trajectory generator to compute the best emergency trajectory for a given landing site. A combination of the optimized version of the rapidly exploring random tree algorithm and Dubins paths is used to compute a path connecting the aircraft position with the landing site, which avoids the obstacles in the way. Then, this path is used as input for a trajectory prediction (TP) algorithm, which computes a four-dimensional trajectory by taking into account the current aircraft performance and weather. The set of vertical profiles considered in the TP has been designed in order to cover the widest possible range of emergency situations. Moreover, the aircraft intents considered in these profiles are chosen by taking into account the operational requirements of the air traffic operation system and the input of the flight crew. Among these profiles, two have been tested during the study, to verify the result of the proposed algorithm and its computing time, which is one of the main success criteria. This concept is expected to be part of an advanced flight management system on-board function to help the pilot take efficient and effective decisions in emergency situations and adverse conditions.The work presented in this paper has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 864771, corresponding to the SafeNcy project (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/864771). The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Clean Sky 2 JU members other than the Union. The opinions expressed herein reflect the authors view only. Under no circumstances shall the Clean Sky 2 JU be responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained hereinPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

SafeNcy - D4.3: Trajectory Generation Validation Plan

This document provides a description of initial validation test plan for the trajectory generation system.Postprint (published version

Aircraft Cruise Alternative Trajectories Generation: A Mixed RRG-Clustering Approach

Weather obstacles in the airspace can interfere with an aircraft’s flight plan. Pilots, assisted by air traffic controllers (ATCs), perform avoidance maneuvers that can be optimized. This paper addresses the generation of alternative aircraft trajectories to resolve unexpected events. The authors propose a solution based on the RRG algorithm, K-means clustering, and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) similarity metric to address the problem. The mixed algorithm succeeds in generating a set of paths with diversity in an obstacle constrained airspace between Paris-Toulouse and London-Toulouse airports. This tool could help to reduce the workload of pilots and ATCs when such a situation arises.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Control & Simulatio