Other

Northrop Corporation

Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation

Litton Systems, Inc.

Seymour Levine

Susan M Raffensperger

James T Hall

John M Kennel

Murty V Mantravadi

A Phillip Simpson

Arthur Bruce O'Connor

Leslie Jae Lenell

Mitsuo Kawahara

Phillip Simpson

SAFELANDER provides a method of safely operating aircraft, equipped with a Flight Control Unit, Instrument Landing System, and Autopilot, remotely on the ground and/or in congested airspace. The remote pilot, who can concurrently control a plurality of operational aircraft, communicates with Air Traffic Control and operates in a secure, synthetic vision, high fidelity, virtual reality cockpit simulator located in a ground-based facility. The patent saves cost and weight by providing a method for safely piloting traditionally dual piloted operational aircraft with just a single onboard pilot. The invention protects aircraft, edifices and the population from pilot error and/or terrorists. Decreases cost of air travel. Quickly, safely and effectively responds to emergencies. Increases flight safety and security. SAFELANDER ciphers and utilizes the two-way RF ground to aircraft and aircraft to ground telecommunication links and critical aircraft flight control data of U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,349, 'Remote, Aircraft, Global Paperless Maintenance System'.

Safelander

This invention is a system that monitors many performance parameters and many aircraft operational parameters, and broadcasts this information along with aircraft identification, audio, video, global positioning and altitude data, to a world wide two-way rf network. This information is monitored and recorded at a remote, centralized location. At this location, this information is combined with archived data, ATC data, weather data, topological data, map data, and manufacturers' data. Analysis of this combined data allows identification of problems and generation of advisories. Six types of advisories are generated: maintenance, safety of flight, flight efficiency, flight separation, safe to fly and safe to take off. In the event of a crash the remotely recorded data provides an instant indication of the cause of the crash as well as where the crashed plane can be found. Use of this invention allows replacement of the current, on-board flight data recorders thus saving costs and weight. Having the recorded data at a remote site eliminates the need to search for flight data recorders. Other advantages are back-up for ATC radar position data, better control of aircraft separation, improved flight efficiency, and allowing use of simpler and lower power radar.

Remote, aircraft, global, paperless maintenance system

Remote aircraft flight recorder and advisory system

A holographic optical element (HOE) includes a substrate structure having rotational symmetry with respect to a rotational axis for rotatively supporting at least two holograms. A first hologram on the substrate structure in the path of a normally incident beam diffracts the beam by a first acute angle and in a first radial direction from the rotational axis to a first redirected path. A second hologram on the substrate structure in the first redirected path diffracts the beam by a different second acute angle and in an opposite second radial direction from the rotational axis to a second redirected path. As a result, the two holograms may be used to achieve a second redirected path at an angle to the rotational axis that has a size which is the difference between the size of the first angle and the size of the second angle. The substrate structure may include first, second, and third disc-shaped substrates bonded together so that the third substrate is in between the first and second substrates, and a thin-film interference filter may be included on the third substrate to suppress zero-order leakage through the first hologram. The filter element may include one of a dielectric stack, a transmission hologram, or a reflectance hologram. The first hologram may be imprinted to achieve total internal reflection of zero-order leakage through the second hologram. An additional interference filter may be included on either the output face of the HOE or on a separate window element in order to reflects any zero-order leakage from the second hologram. The HOE may also have Schmidt-type aberration correction superimposed on at least one of the holograms to compensate for spherical aberrations from an all spherical Cassegrain type of telescope.

Holographic laser scanner and rangefinder

A star tracker for generating positional information for a vehicle includes a holographic telescope (150) having one or more fields of view for imaging stellar objects. The telescope includes a plurality of radiation detectors (100) and an input aperture comprised of a primary holographic optical element (HOE) (134). The primary HOE provides one or more wavefronts to one or more secondary HOEs (136), each of which applies a chromatic correction so as to correct for a chromatic aberration induced by the primary HOE. A single or multiple field of view Schmidt telescope embodiment is also disclosed having one or more aspheric corrector plate HOEs and one or more associated concave spherical reflectors.

Strapdown stellar sensor and holographic multiple field of view

A star tracker for generating positional information for a vehicle includes a telescope 40 having multiple fields of view for imaging stellar objects. The telescope includes a plurality of radiation detectors 58 and an input lens 45 comprised of, in one embodiment of the invention, a plurality of holographic elements 45a and 45b. The holographic elements direct incident radiation originating from a plurality of stellar objects to an associated one of the radiation detectors. In another embodiment the multiple field of view telescope is comprised of a monocentric ball lens 80. The tracker may further include a multiplexer 60 for sequentially reading out a signal from each of the radiation detectors and a controller 62 coupled to the multiplexer for receiving the signals and for determining from the positions of the stellar objects imaged by the telescope a position of the vehicle.

Strapdown stellar sensor and holographic lens therefor

Apparatus and a method for detecting deflections along the length of a pipeline. A plurality of measurements of inertial attitude are made along the length of the pipeline over time by means of apparatus, including sensors, associated with a pipeline pig. Thereafter, by comparing a time sequence of such measurements, points of flexure are accurately located and identified.

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Topanga, CA, United States of America

Seymour Levine