Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft can provide opportunities to incorporate aerial transportation into transportation networks for cities and metropolitan areas. However, VTOL aircraft may be noisy. To accommodate this, the aircraft may utilize onboard sensors, offboard sensing, network, and predictive temporal data for noise signature mitigation. By building a composite understanding of real data offboard the aircraft, the aircraft can make adjustments to the way it is flying and verify this against a predicted noise signature (via computational methods) to reduce environmental impact. This might be realized via a change in translative speed, propeller speed, or choices in propulsor usage (e.g., a quiet propulsor vs. a high thrust, noisier propulsor). These noise mitigation actions may also be decided at the network level rather than the vehicle level to balance concerns across a city and relieve computing constraints on the aircraft.

An unmanned aircraft structure evaluation system includes a computer system with an input unit, a display unit, one or more processors, and one or more non-transitory computer readable medium. Image display and analysis software causes the one or more processors to generate unmanned aircraft information. The unmanned aircraft information includes flight path information configured to direct an unmanned aircraft to fly a flight path around the structure. The software causes a camera on the unmanned aircraft to capture one or more image of at least one of the sides of the structure while executing the flight path. The system may receive the one or more image and generate a structure report based at least in part on the one or more image.

A method implemented by computer for calculating a lateral approach trajectory of an aircraft, comprises the steps of receiving selection of a landing runway; determining a zone Z1, the zone defining trajectory limits to carry out a last turn with a view to landing on the indicated runway; receiving indication of a trajectory point FF defining a point of alignment of the aircraft; determining a joining trajectory bound for a point FAF2, the joining trajectory going from the aircraft to the point FAF2 and then to the point FF and then to the indicated landing runway without passing through the zone Z1. Developments describe the use of a zone Z2 associated with visibility conditions, the calculation of the energy to be dissipated, the use of a predefined descent profile, the emission of alerts and trajectory adaptations by increasing the length of the joining trajectory or use of the airbrakes.

A method and system for interacting with the systems of an aircraft using touch screen technology that includes a human machine interface device for interacting with aircraft systems. The human machine interface including an input/display device configured to provide for navigating among graphical representations of a plurality of aircraft avionics systems via the common human machine interface; selecting an aircraft system via at least one of a touch gesture and a voice command input to the input/display device; inputting an instruction to the selected aircraft system; and outputting information via at least one of visual, aural, haptic and tactile channels.

A flight management system with core and supplementary modules is proposed. The core module may include generic applications that implement generic functionalities related to a flight management of the aircraft. The supplementary module may include supplementary applications that implement supplementary functionalities specific to an entity to which the aircraft belongs. The supplementary module may be divided into principal and auxiliary partitions (or entities), and the supplementary applications, also referred to as principal applications, may be implemented in the principal partition. One or more auxiliary applications may be implemented in the auxiliary partition. Each auxiliary application may be associated with one or more principal applications such that the execution of the principal application requires the associated auxiliary application to be executed.

This disclosure is directed to systems and methods for smart transitioning between aircraft trajectory management modes. In one example, a system is configured to track a speed of a target aircraft in flight ahead of an own aircraft on which the system is positioned. The system is further configured to determine whether the target aircraft has maintained a rate of change in speed within a selected range of variation in change of speed, for a selected period of time. The system is further configured to enable an activation of a merging trajectory management mode of the own aircraft in response to determining that the own aircraft is in a trajectory management mode transition airspace and that the target aircraft has maintained the rate of change in speed within the selected range of variation in change of speed, for the selected period of time.

An offscreen traffic information indicator system includes signal receivers for receiving traffic messages from proximate air and ground vehicles and a traffic indicator for determining the positions of the host aircraft and the proximate vehicles based on the traffic messages. Based on the locations of the host aircraft and proximate vehicles and their proximity to airport runways, the traffic indicator may designate runways as relevant runways (or receive relevant runway designations from the flight management system of the host aircraft) and designate proximate vehicles as relevant to the host aircraft. A display unit may display, along with a dynamic map of a region near the host aircraft, relevant runway indicators for relevant runways within the mapped region and offscreen traffic indicators for relevant aircraft positioned outside the mapped region.

A path searching apparatus includes: a path searching unit that searches for an optimal path of a movable body that performs traveling from a start node to a goal node by performing a path searching process based on A-Star algorithm, and a predicting unit that predicts a surrounding situation of the movable body at each of times in future. The path searching unit determines whether a first surrounding situation involves a change from a second surrounding situation, on a basis of the predicted surrounding situation, and upon determining that the first surrounding situation involves the change, updates an estimated smallest cost value h* of a node on which the searching has been already performed, on a basis of the first surrounding situation.

The present disclosure provides a flight instructing method and device as well as an aerial vehicle. The flight instructing method may comprise: obtaining meteorological information of a target flight region; determining a flight-limiting parameter candidate of an aerial vehicle in the target flight region according to the obtained meteorological information; and issuing a flight-limiting indication based on the determined flight-limiting parameter candidate.

A method of performing a cooperative safe landing area determination includes receiving perception sensor data indicative of conditions at a plurality of potential landing areas. A processing subsystem of a vehicle updates a local safe landing area map based on the perception sensor data. The local safe landing area map defines safe landing area classifications and classification confidences associated with the potential landing areas. One or more remotely-generated safe landing area maps are received from one or more remote data sources. The one or more remotely-generated safe landing area maps correspond to one or more additional potential landing areas and non-landing areas. The local safe landing area map and the remotely-generated safe landing area maps are aggregated to form a fused safe landing area map. The fused safe landing area map is used to make a final safe landing area determination.