EASY-HANDLING

The research focuses on a handling concept for Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) applications, especially for CS23/Class I/II aircraft. The main focus is on the use as a personal air vehicle, which requires the ability to operate under instrument flight conditions.
However, the expansion of the pilot's area of responsibility that usually accompanies this must be reconciled with the "Ease of Use" requirements of a PAV at the same time. This is accomplished by shifting the area of responsibility on the system side and requires that the increased system complexity remain hidden from the pilot even during failures - i.e., there are no functional degradations that need to be trained.

The requirements for such an Easy Handling Control System (EHS) were defined in so-called Easy Handling Control Qualities (EHQ).

The central feature of such a system is the ability to autonomously guide the aircraft in all flight phases (including emergency situations). The basis for this is a route planner that is capable of reacting in real time to changing requirements. The pilot's task is reduced to monitoring the flight route and, if necessary, influencing the mission through route modifications.

A manual control mode is optionally available to the pilot and is released by the system after prior verification. The pilot specifies desired vector settings via his sidestick controller. Flight envelope protections, which are executed in the background, prevent the aircraft from leaving the flight envelope limits. Route Envelope Protections limit the position of the aircraft to positions that allow the determination of a valid route under consideration of relevant boundary conditions (air traffic control clearances, weather conditions, aircraft condition, topography ...). A change to autonomous operation mode can be initiated by the pilot or the system at any time.