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Arthur, Trey

Publications and source records attributed to Arthur, Trey.

Initial Flight Testing of an eXternal Vision System (XVS) for the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD)

NASA will design an eXternal Vision System (XVS) that, with other aircraft systems and subsystems, will ensure safe and efficient operations in all phases of flight for its Low Boom Flight Demonstrator vehicle. XVS is a combination of display, sensor, and computing technologies, creating an electronic means of forward visibility for the pilot. A flight test was performed evaluating a preliminary design of an XVS to quantify, by direct comparison, the ability of a pilot using an XVS to see and recognize airborne traffic compared to that of a pilot using forward-facing windows during challenging see-and-avoid scenarios. The data showed that the XVS and forward-facing windows were essentially equivalent in detecting and recognizing incurring traffic aircraft. The data also showed that the pilot using the XVS could see and recognize the incurring traffic at no less than 0.7 nm prior to the pilot using the forward-facing windows. The performance of the XVS was dependent upon the application of image contrast enhancement. Recommendations for future improvements were captured from evaluation pilot commentary.

Kramer, Lynda J

Hybrid Terrain Database

A prototype hybrid terrain database is being developed in conjunction with other databases and with hardware and software that constitute subsystems of aerospace cockpit display systems (known in the art as synthetic vision systems) that generate images to increase pilots' situation awareness and eliminate poor visibility as a cause of aviation accidents. The basic idea is to provide a clear view of the world around an aircraft by displaying computer-generated imagery derived from an onboard database of terrain, obstacle, and airport information.

Arthur, Trey

Flight Test Comparison of Synthetic Vision Display Concepts at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport

Limited visibility is the single most critical factor affecting the safety and capacity of worldwide aviation operations. Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) technology can solve this visibility problem with a visibility solution. These displays employ computer-generated terrain imagery to present 3D, perspective out-the-window scenes with sufficient information and realism to enable operations equivalent to those of a bright, clear day, regardless of weather conditions. To introduce SVS display technology into as many existing aircraft as possible, a retrofit approach was defined that employs existing HDD display capabilities for glass cockpits and HUD capabilities for the other aircraft. This retrofit approach was evaluated for typical nighttime airline operations at a major international airport. Overall, 6 evaluation pilots performed 75 research approaches, accumulating 18 hours flight time evaluating SVS display concepts that used the NASA LaRC's Boeing B-757-200 aircraft at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Results from this flight test establish the SVS retrofit concept, regardless of display size, as viable for tested conditions. Future assessments need to extend evaluation of the approach to operations in an appropriate, terrain-challenged environment with daytime test conditions.

Glaab, Louis J.

Intel NX to PVM 3.2 message passing conversion library

NASA Langley Research Center has developed a library that allows Intel NX message passing codes to be executed under the more popular and widely supported Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) message passing library. PVM was developed at Oak Ridge National Labs and has become the defacto standard for message passing. This library will allow the many programs that were developed on the Intel iPSC/860 or Intel Paragon in a Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) design to be ported to the numerous architectures that PVM (version 3.2) supports. Also, the library adds global operations capability to PVM. A familiarity with Intel NX and PVM message passing is assumed.

Arthur, Trey

A comparison using APPL and PVM for a parallel implementation of an unstructured grid generation program

Efforts to parallelize the VGRIDSG unstructured surface grid generation program are described. The inherent parallel nature of the grid generation algorithm used in VGRIDSG was exploited on a cluster of Silicon Graphics IRIS 4D workstations using the message passing libraries Application Portable Parallel Library (APPL) and Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). Comparisons of speed up are presented for generating the surface grid of a unit cube and a Mach 3.0 High Speed Civil Transport. It was concluded that for this application, both APPL and PVM give approximately the same performance, however, APPL is easier to use.

Arthur, Trey