Soft Computing in the General Aviation Cockpit

The aviation industry stands to benefit from the technological advances that have come to be known as soft computing. This paper describes how soft computing techniques are being used to improve a pilot’s situational awareness. Of particular interest is the ability of a computer to add value to the raw sensor data, autonomously monitoring the aircraft’s situation for possible anomalies in flight management. This function is performed by the Flight Mode Interpreter (FMI). The FMI is a fuzzy inference module which classifies the current aircraft state into operational modes. Examples are included of the FMI in operation. Concluding remarks summarize this written presentation and suggest additional areas that need to be addressed.