The SAFE-Cue will be targeted for use in modern commercial transports where it can add a significantly increased level of safety at a reasonable incremental cost. Recent FAA forecasts for the year 2011 indicate that the US commercial and regional airliner fleet will be more than 11,000 aircraft. A small market penetration of the US market alone would be enough to recover development and marketing costs. STI will leverage the ongoing interest of several airframe manufacturers in its Smart-Cue and Smart-Gain concepts as a means to introduce this new, more widely focused approach to preventing loss of control. The worldwide commercial airliner market will provide a significant follow on market. Target military programs where SAFE-Cue would have the potential to reduce accidents in the more extreme military operational environment include the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and CH-53K heavy lift cargo helicopter, both of which feature active pilot control inceptors.
The SAFE-Cue approach directly addresses a concern of the Integrated Resilient Aircraft Control topic under NASA's Aviation Safety Program to provide a means to prevent pilot-vehicle system loss of control in the presence of an active adaptive control system. A successful Phase 2 program will produce a prototype SAFE-Cue system that will alert the pilot regarding flight control system adaptations due to failures and/or damage and constrain the pilot via active inceptor force feedback and command path gain attenuation as a means to mitigate loss-of-control scenarios. SAFE-Cue will detect deviations in the adaptive aircraft when compared to the nominal aircraft, and when these deviations become too large, the active cueing via control inceptor force feedback and the active command path gain attenuation will be engaged. The interest in preventing loss-of-control is based on a very real problem that has caused loss of life and property throughout the history of flight.
More »