AGATE OUT TO ROCK THE AVIATION WORLD July 28, 2000 Release: 00-59 Printer Friendly Version
Ever since there have been airplanes, futurists have predicted revolutions in transportation; an airplane in every driveway, taking everybody everywhere with ease. Some thought the answer would be found in roadable aircraft that could be used as cars when not airborne; others figured control simplification like that found on the Ercoupe would bring flight to the mass acceptance level of automobiles. Admirable as those concepts are, the revolution still waits in the wings. Enter AGATE, the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments consortium nurtured by NASA to encourage industry and government cooperation in a rethinking of access to the skies overhead. Last year, AGATE awarded its "Highway in the Sky" (HITS) contract to a team led by AvroTec and Avidyne to devise an intuitive General Aviation cockpit graphical display system, equipped to allow ease of comprehension and upgradability. The desired end result is an affordable "glass cockpit" of graphical displays presenting logical information to enable a General Aviation pilot to navigate safely in instrument conditions to and from just about any airport in the United States. NASA wants AGATE-evolved airplanes to be as safe and economical as automobiles for trips typically ranging from 500 to 1000 miles, thereby hopefully alleviating highway gridlock and airline terminal congestion by sending a whole new segment of the population to the skies in their own aircraft. The goal is transportation, not skylarking. "What we're doing is not designed for the sportsman," says NASA's Walter Green, work package leader for the HITS flight systems. "It's for the person who wants to use a small airplane for transportation." The HITS contract seeks to provide pilots with direct access to the information needed for safely determining routes, speeds, and proximity of adverse weather, terrain, and other aircraft, as well as aircraft attitude and position. The HITS premise revolves around an open systems architecture that replaces mechanical dial instruments with graphical displays that can be upgraded with software modification or replaced as new technologies emerge. NASA and the FAA expect the HITS cockpit to set the standard for affordable future General Aviation instrument panels, ensuring that the information for safe, efficient personal air travel is clearly and intuitively presented. Aircraft manufacturers Raytheon, Cirrus and Lancair are on board to resolve aircraft integration and certification issues. Lancair and Cirrus aircraft are already offered with optional HITS phase one cockpits. Mary Nolan, president of AvroTec, (the industry HITS team manager) says the outcome of HITS technology in General Aviation aircraft "will provide safer and more convenient regional mobility as surely as the interstate highway system gave us cheaper and faster ground movement from city to city."
"We want to make the benefits of personal air travel -- convenient scheduling, reduced travel time, and flexibility -- available to everyone who flies now and everyone who wants to fly." Now, in the summer of 2000, the HITS phase one technology is flying and living up to its promise. It's a glass cockpit with a moving map on a multi-function display. Central to its success is the global positioning satellite (GPS) network orbiting overhead. Phase two will incorporate a host of autonomous route functions including landing approaches in instrument conditions. The ability to do this has been enhanced by the federal government's discontinuance of "selective availability" which used to degrade the commercially-available GPS signal, explains Hank Jarrett, NASA's AGATE manager at the Langley Aeronautical Research Center in Virginia. So, how will HITS be different enough to coax current non-fliers out of their cars and into the skies? NASA's Jarrett and Green see their target audience as a computer-literate generation to whom this technology will be second-nature. If past attempts at getting non-fliers aloft have relied on conventional airplanes, the AGATE program seeks to put the next generation of computer kids in front of a familiar screen, that, by the way, happens to be attached to a reasonably priced flying machine. Unlike current-generation instrument flight procedures, the fully-functional HITS cockpit will be intuitive and easy to recall, Green says, making recurrent instrument training a thing of the past.
Some HITS cockpits are configured with sidestick controllers, Jarrett says. This provides the comfort zone of a video game to a generation who grew up on video games. Other HITS-capable airplanes may be available with a choice of sidestick or conventional yoke. Sidesticks may be mechanical, or similar to the fly-by-wire system being tested on a Beech Bonanza.
For existing pilots who feel a need to transition into the cockpit of the future gradually, Green says some interim HITS cockpits may feature integrated and multi-functional graphical displays as well as a back-up panel of "steam gauges", as he calls traditional round-dial instruments, "for the unsure," he adds. HITS is one aspect of the AGATE consortium managed at NASA's Langley Research Center; other work packages address issues like structures and materials, single-lever power controls, data bus technology, ground infrastructure and data-link, weather, traffic, and crashworthiness.
At NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the General Aviation Propulsion (GAP) program is a related effort, in which diesel and turbofan engines will come calling on the General Aviation marketplace with promises of new efficiencies to make flying less expensive, and perhaps even more environmentally friendly.
AGATE is a group of commercial, academic and government entities who came together for the express purpose of improving General Aviation safety and revitalizing the American small aircraft industry. More than $30 million has been invested by NASA and private industry in AGATE ventures that have improved training, enhanced certification of manufacturing processes, improved weather avoidance systems and navigation displays, and made engine controls easier to use. NASA hopes AGATE's innovations will revolutionize mobility for Americans in the 21st Century. Jarrett and Green emphasize NASA's role is that of a partner; the hardware revolution is being borne and commercialized by the industry.
So, why will AGATE and its HITS project finally succeed in getting more Americans airborne than previous visionary efforts aimed at that same goal? NASA and its alliance partners hope the answer lies in the fact they are targeting a specific audience with new, yet familiar, technology rather than merely trying to entice newcomers to fly standard airplanes. The computerization is one key aspect; others include some breakthrough stall-spin prevention technologies for airframes as well as the use of composite materials. To a generation used to automobile crash-survivability tests, AGATE offers the prospect of certificated airframes made of composites that are lighter than aluminum, yet stronger than steel, Jarrett says.
With that in mind, AGATE has developed a comprehensive data base for composite aircraft materials that now allows manufacturers to design "by the book" instead of having to test and prove each composite structure for FAA certification.
Jarrett says some AGATE members tout this data base as the single most important output of AGATE because it opens up the world of composites and makes production of composite airframes more economically feasible. By 2001, NASA and its AGATE partners hope to have a completely functional HITS phase two aircraft ready to demonstrate at Oshkosh, autonomy and all. The hopes of NASA and the other AGATE participants are succinct: they want more of you to take to the skies, safely.
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