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Every airliner relies upon a Flight Management System (FMS), which incorporates avionics and helps the pilot with navigation, flight planning, and aircraft control functions. Most general aviation (GA) aircraft are not equipped with such a system. As computer processing power has increased and its cost decreased, there are opportunities to incorporate this additional processing power into an FMS for general aviation aircraft. This will provide GA pilots with more advanced avionics and allow them to fly "smarter" planes. This will help pilots fly more safely and better monitor and diagnose their aircraft performance.
In 2006, a consortium including four leading U.S. civilian aircraft manufacturers initiated a research project with a KU faculty member in the Aerospace Engineering Department. The overall focus was to investigate the impacts of integrating additional computing capabilities into a low cost FMS to be used in current GA aircraft. This included evaluating how the additional sensing and computing processing may generate electro-magnetic interference (EMI) within the aircraft and how the use of wireless computing within the aircraft, with its EMI properties, affects the FMS.
The project will continue through 2007. The KU Aerospace research team working on this and related projects consists of faculty and graduate and undergraduate students. This research also complements KU's ongoing research on a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles and their systems.
To explore possible collaboration with KU, please contact:
Carey Novak
Director | Business Relations and Development
KU Center for Research, Inc.
The University of Kansas
2385 Irving Hill Rd.
Lawrence, KS 66045-7563
785-864-9004 | cnovak@ku.edu
1-877-865-9932
785-864-5272 fax
