Page 22 - World Airnews Magazine April 2020 Edition

AVIONICS

AIRBUS ADVANCES AUTONOMY

PROJECT AS PART OF

FUTURE-COCKPIT CONCEPT

he autonomous taxi, take-
Toff -and-landing (ATTOL) project
is the first visible part of Airbus’ work on

a so-called fifth-generation flight deck,
aimed at improving safety by allowing a

crew more time for decision-making.
As part of the project, a modified A350-

1000 performed eight automated takeoffs

last year in Toulouse, using an image-rec-

ognition system. Landing trials followed in
mid-January.
Airbus flight safety experts see the main

goal for the design of a fifth-generation

cockpit as enabling the pilot to become a ment landing system [ILS], and only a few For the landing tests, the crew aligned

mission manager. hundred runways are compatible with our the aircraft with the centre line in approach

Information should be presented more auto land capacity,” said Sebastian Giulia- and then cut off GPS and ILS receivers. The

synthetically, said Pascal Traverse, Airbus no, ATTOL project manager. aircraft landed autonomously, using visual

general manager of autonomy technolo- In 2013, in Birmingham, Alabama, a cues. Two runways were used for the five
gy. Typically, a primary flight display with UPS-operated Airbus A300 freighter landings, meaning the system adapted to

parameters such as a speed scale could crashed, killing both crewmembers. The different visual environments.

disappear for most of the flight. ILS was unavailable. The crew failed to During deceleration, the system re-

The electronic centralised aircraft monitor properly configure the flight management aligned the aircraft when required.

(ECAM, also known as the engine-indicating computer and monitor the aircraft’s alti- The fifth landing involved the brake-to-

and crew-alerting system) usually recom- tude, the NTSB investigation found. vacate system, which regulates deceler-

mends remedial actions. “Instead of telling Satellite-based guidance does not allow ation so the aircraft reaches the chosen

the crew to shut down a pump, the ECAM auto landing, but it can be seen as an al- exit at the correct speed. Coupling the two

would shut it down itself,” Traverse said. ternative to ILS. However, loss of the signal systems was deemed successful.

In a fifth-generation cockpit, the autopi- from a global navigation satellite system is Could fog be a limitation? The ATTOL sys-
lot would be key. It would have more ca- reported regularly. tem could use sensors outside the visible

pabilities - such as coping with wind gusts With computer vision, the aircraft would spectrum, Giuliano said.

- and therefore can be engaged throughout no longer depend on an external system, The resulting “image” would not have to be
the flight. It would become even more Giuliano emphasizes. seen by a human eye and therefore could be

reliable thanks to increased computer The ATTOL project was launched in June analysed directly by a software programme.
redundancy, Traverse explained. 2018 for two years by Airbus UpNext, an Another limitation- sunlight dazzling the

Enhancing the autopilot would allow an organisation that also manages the E-Fan X camera- has been overcome by using the

existing trend to continue. The A350 in- hybrid-electric demonstrator and Fello’fly camera that monitors the main landing

cludes the latest progress in autopilot tech- project for fuel-efficient formation flight. gear, which is under the nose section and
nology, as it remains engaged even though One aim of the ATTOL system is to exploit oriented rearward, shielding it from the

flight-envelope protection becomes active. the possibilities of image recognition when Sun and enabling it to follow the runway’s

Moreover, the speed brakes automatically the system is close to the ground. centre line, Giuliano said.

extend after the aircraft surpasses 5 kt. At the heart of ATTOL are a camera It can be used for every takeoff after rota-

above maximum operating speed. (mounted on top of the instrument panel tion, once the cockpit camera is pointing at

In the fifth-generation cockpit, the size and looking forward), image-processing the sky and not the runway.

of the crew no longer would be a factor of algorithms and a control law. The system Although no product development has

safety, according to Traverse. A long-haul detects converging vanishing lines and begun, a certification challenge can be

flight would need two pilots instead of deduces the runway’s centre line. foreseen because some algorithms use

three, but “reducing the size of the crew is The December flight test began with a machine learning (ML).

not an objective,” he said. deliberate 4m (13-ft.) offset position before The European Union Aviation Safety

The ATTOL system is intended to give the the brakes were released. The aircraft auton- Agency recently released the first edition of

crew more time and bandwidth to analyze omously reached the centre line while ac- its “Artificial Intelligence Roadmap,” which

a situation, regardless of the airport’s land- celerating. In a video released by Airbus, the begins to answer OEMs’ questions on how

ing aids. It would enable the aircraft to land co-pilot can be heard saying, “It is converging to certify an ML-based system. Q

automatically, while the crew looks at the . . . overshooting . . . coming back on it.”

situation as a whole. At the preset speed, the control law took Article courtesy: https://atwonline.com/

“Airbus commercial aircraft use 4,000 care of the rotation, and the autopilot took aerospace/airbus-advances-autono-

airports, 1,000 of which have an instru- over with an existing mode, said Giuliano. my-project-part-future-cockpit-concept
World Airnews | April 2020
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