Patent Application
20070072639
Crash survivable flight recorders are an invaluable source of information for crash investigation. The recorders by design are crashproof and fireproof; the information stored in protected memory includes airplane flight data, crew voice data, datalink messages and cockpit ambient audio. The current crash survivable flight recorders are generally installed in the tail or rear of airplanes, behind panels that must be removed for access to the recorder for direct data download. Gaining access to the stored flight data may be a labor-intensive maintenance task and may require separate access points, connectors, or wiring added to the airplane installation. Therefore, there exists a need for a convenient method for routinely accessing stored flight data.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for wirelessly offloading data from a flight recorder. In one embodiment, a method of offloading data recorded on a flight recorder includes determining whether to enable a wireless transmitter and wirelessly transmitting previously stored data on the flight recorder via the wireless transmitter according to the determination.
In one aspect, wireless transmission is determined by evaluation of airplane-supplied parameters, such as weight on wheels, air speed, ground speed, engine speed, open compartments and sensed forces. Wireless transmission may be initiated either manually or automatically.
The preferred and alternative embodiments of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the following drawings.
In one embodiment, a processor 24 is coupled to the data input receiver 28 to receive the data and determines whether to enable wireless data offloading by engaging a wireless component 32. Data is stored to a crash-survivable memory unit 22 and overwritten as the memory unit 22 becomes full. The processor 24 includes a circuit card assembly (CCA) upon which it resides. After determining whether to enable wireless activation, the wireless component 32 employs a wireless data networking protocol used to connect to a network or external receiving device 30. In one embodiment, the receiving device 30 includes a graphical user interface or similar control software program for allowing an operator to control retrieval and replay of the data stored in the recorder 20.
Conditions for enabling wireless data offloading include aircraft parameters such as, weight on the wheels, speed below certain air or ground speed limit, an open door, engine speed, and forces on the aircraft. The wireless component 32 is engaged when wireless data offloading is enabled. In one embodiment, wireless data offloading is initiated manually and interactively offloaded, as will be further described in reference to
At a decision block 47, manual or automatic offloading is determined. This step depends upon how the system is configured. If the system is configured for automatic offloading, then at a block 48, data is automatically wirelessly transmitted. If at a decision block 50, all the data is offloaded, then at a block 52, the automatically transmitted data is received by a receiving device, such as a laptop, palm device, cell phone, or a data analysis system in communication with a computer wireless router located at a fixed location, such as a gate.
If at a decision block 47, a determination was made to manually download the data, the data is interactively offloaded at a block 54. It at a decision block 56, all the data is offloaded, the data is sent to the receiving device at block 52. While the preferred embodiment of the invention has been illustrated and described, as noted above, many changes can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the scope of the invention is not limited by the disclosure of the preferred embodiment. Instead, the invention should be determined entirely by reference to the claims that follow.
