Turbulence Awareness for Strategic Aircraft Re-Routing (TASAR-R)

We develop a system composed of two displays, one for the Flight Deck (FD) and one for the Airline Operational Control (AOC) dispatcher. The FD and AOC displays form a shared situational awareness of the different forms of turbulence hazards that are ahead of the aircraft. A wide range of turbulence measurement, sensing, and forecasting systems are available, and we determined the most appropriate for aviation weather hazards originating from convective induced turbulence, mountain wave turbulence, and clear air turbulence. The FD and AOC displays are used to exchange candidate flight plan amendments that can mitigate the turbulence weather hazards ahead of the aircraft, meeting the additional requirements known to the FD or the AOC. Agreement from both the FD and AOC is required to thereafter file the flight plan amendement with the air traffic service provider.

The supporting sources of data, data transformations (including polygonalization), integration into EFB and PED displays for the FD, display features, and coordination of mitigation strategies has direct application into the NASA Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR) Traffic Aware Planner (TAP) software system. The SBIR software will also be useful in Human in the Loop experiments at NASA.

PASSUR Aerospace will partner with us on the Phase II effort in order to demonstrate the FD PED integrated with the AOC dispatcher workstation. In particular, we design the Phase II system to integrate with the PASSUR Web Tracker flight monitoring system to create a shared situational awareness and coordinated mitigation strategy.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 2) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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