Aviation Technology Systems (ATS) proposes to investigate software development techniques that optimize the integration of new and existing aircraft Flight Performance Modules (FPM?s) within the Tactical Aircraft Mission Planning System (TAMPS) by identifying common, reusable and redundant software modules in the TAMPS core module and platform specific Mission Planning Modules (MPM?s). This investigation will result in recommended techniques for improving both the accuracy and efficiency with which TAMPS processes aircraft performance planning tasks and for reducing the life-cycle costs for software maintenance support. Toward this end, advanced techniques for aircraft performance modeling will be investigated to provide mire accurate, efficient and integrated aircraft performance models, For example, ATS also will investigate the application of a novel approach to aircraft performance modeling technology that has undergone preliminary research at ATS during cooperative investigation with the Naval Air Warfare Center. This research has shown an exceptional capability to accurately and efficiently model the performance of an aircraft by a training neural network system on the known aircraft performance parameters.
Benefits: Techniques for optimizing software architectures such as TAMPS are key to the open architecture concept and therefor has numerous applications. Additionally, efficient "drop-in" aircraft performance modules resulting from this approach could be used in civilian and military simulators and other mission/flight planning and tracking systems. The capability to provide more accurate, faster and smaller aircraft performance models represents significant opportunity for commercial aircraft planning and tracking systems. It is estimated that a 1 percent performance improvement for just the wide-body transports in the United States fleet would result in savings of approximately $100 million per year, with an additional savings of $20 million per year for each $0.10 per gallon increase in fuel price. In light of the rising cost of fuel and the rising volume of commercial air traffic management capability of the FAA, NASA and the airlines is a demonstrable need. Many ground based air traffic management systems, as well as embedded flight planning/management systems could benefit directly from this technology. All of this has yet to mention the fundamental software support savings directly attainable for the TAMPS program and its sponsors simply by eliminating the costs associated with maintaining redundant code in numerous MPM?s as opposed to maintaining it only within the core module. The key to commercializing the research that comes from this effort is a company?s ability to transition lab technology to real world applications. ATS is unique in not only developing this kind of innovative technology but also applying it to the solution of today's aviation performance modeling requirements.
Keywords: Flight Performance Modules Mission/Flight Planning Software Aircraft Performance Algorithms Cognitive Algorithms Predictive Maintenance Neural Networks
