ARP in the Field of Future Cockpit Design

At the Institute of Flight Systems and Control (FSR) and in cooperation with industry, future cockpit concepts are researched. Against the background of so-called Reduced Crew Operations as well as increasing automation, tasks and objectives of future pilots will change fundamentally compared to today – the pilot becomes a mission manager. This ARP work contributes to the evaluation of the developed concepts. The goal is to develop, implement and evaluate an experimental design for vigilance measurements in FSR’s flight simulator.

Future air traffic will shift to trajectory based operations, where flight plans are tied to specific temporal constraints. At FSR an algorithm was developed that optimizes the altitude and speed profile of a flight with respect to weather and mentioned temporal constraints. The algorithm is designed to support the flight execution. The algorithm will be evaluated by simulating flights on many different times. The applicant will support the automated data processing and visualization of the results.

Exchange Program with the University of Colorado Boulder

In cooperation with our partner Jeppesen we offer students from the department of mechanical engineering with focus on aviation the opportunity to go abroad. Included are two trimesters at the University of Colorado at Boulder as well as an internship with Jeppesen in Denver. Applications must be due by November 30th, 2017, and should be sent to the MechCenter. A general information session on international exchange programs offered by the department of engineering will be held on October 25th, at 18.00 in L4|02-201. Additionally we offer a specific information session on the Boulder exchange program on Friday, November 10h, at 15.00 in L1|01-562K.

Das Institut für Flugsysteme und Regelungstechnik baut einen Prüfstand zur Untersuchung von elektromechanischen Aktuatoren auf. Über eine mechanische Strecke ist ein Lastaktuator integriert, welcher die Aufbringung dynamischer Lastprofile auf den Prüfling ermöglicht. Die integrierte Sensorik bildet den Grundstein für die Regelung und Überwachung der Versuche. Für den Betrieb des Prüfstands kommt Hardware von National Instruments zum Einsatz, weshalb die Versuchsdurchführung und Datenerfassung über LabVIEW implementiert wird. Eine spätere Verarbeitung der Daten findet in MATLAB/Simulink statt.

Seit dem Wintersemester 2016/2017 wird am Institut für Flugsysteme und Regelungstechnik das jährlich stattfindende Tutorium Cockpitgestaltung angeboten. Die Studierenden bearbeiten hierbei im Team eine Aufgabenstellung aus dem Bereich der allgemeinen, geschäftlichen oder kommerziellen Luftfahrt. Auf der Grundlage von funktionellen und ergonomischen Anforderungen wird ein eigener Cockpitentwurf entwickelt, mittels CAD-Software visualisiert und eine abschließende Evaluierung durchgeführt.

Im kommenden Wintersemester 2017/18 findet wieder die Lehrveranstaltung „Systemtheorie und Regelungstechnik“ für alle Bachelor-Studenten/innen im fünften Semester des Studien- gangs „Mechanical and Process Engineering“ statt. Hierfür werden Tutoren/innen gesucht, die den Übungsbetrieb unterstützen und aktiv mitgestalten sollen.

The Institute of Flight Systems and Automatic Control (FSR) is now looking for a student assistant in the field of innovative taxi technologies. The projects deal with the assessment of future taxi procedures and the evaluation of trajectory-based dispatch towing operations.

ADP

Multirotor UAVs offer a wide range of applications in numerous business areas. The economic benefits for civil applications are, however, often only achievable with the aid of semi-autonomously systems. These systems do not need pilots and manual flight scheduling, thus saving high personnel and training costs. To increase the system’s safety, a research project at FSR deals with a condition-based determination of small multicopter’s actual flight performance. Knowledge of the actual flight performance enables an evaluation of mission risk for adaptive mission planners or an optimization of parameters for adaptive flight controllers.

ADP / ARP

Due to increasing air traffic passenger volumes and the associated expansion of airports (e.g. Frankfurt am Main), airborne noise is becoming a major issue. But the problem is not only noise produced by overflying aircraft, ground noise emitted by taxiing aircraft as well as engine tests also play a major role and can pose a disturbance to the population living in the immediate vicinity of the airport. An introduction of electromobile technologies for towing and taxiing of aircraft aims to reduce the level of the ambient noise.

In the future cockpit, only one pilot may operate the aircraft during the cruise phase (“Reduced Crew Operations”). At FSR, the “Future Flight Deck” project currently investigates if and how such a scenario with only one pilot could be implemented. Autonomous systems will assume functions of the second pilot in order to reduce the workload of the remaining pilot.