SBIR-STTR Award

Pre-flight and in-flight activities require pilots to carry voluminous materials, such as maps and charts, and utilize commercial applications that do not provide mission-specific information. This creates issues for the pilot by occupying physical space in the cockpit and forcing them to use multiple sources to complete their duties. By developing an electronic kneeboard application suite for the iPad, we will remove this reliance on hard-copy materials and third-party software and improve situational awareness in-flight by moving this information into a single location. Phase I aims to lay the foundation by first understanding the pilots role through user interviews and the creation of a Goal-Driven Task Analysis. This will be used to guide the design and development of an assigned example application to help pilots calculate brake temperature, along with an initial design concept for the application suite and a software development framework to be developed in future phases. This framework will serve as an open-source tool that third-party development teams can use to improve upon and build new products for the application suitedriving business for us as the product manager, and helping to further position our company as experts in the field of situational awareness technology.

Benefit:
This topic will allow ATS to market our own, open-source kneeboard applications based on the framework we will develop. These applications will be competitors to the current established names in this area like Garmin, ForeFlight, and Seattle Avionics FlyQ, but by open-sourcing the framework it will allow third-party developers to build add-on applications and features in order to make the platform more appealing to pilots. This path offers multiple ways to monetize by charging end-users (pilots) a subscription fee for use of the application suite that ATS builds, along with charging developers a licensing fee for use of add-ons built and managed by ATS. Furthermore, by creating a framework that can be integrated with both classified and unclassified systems, we will have a product that has passed the necessary stages to be fielded. This creates an advantage over commercial-based applications that ATS can use as a marketing opportunity to propose similar systems to other government agencies with aviation services such as the FAA, USDA Forest Service, the U.S. Postal Services, emergency rescue services, and other DoD branches. There is also a a less direct commercialization opportunity involving our company direction towards becoming a leader in the field of Situational Awareness Technology. With the proliferation of mobile technology, and the introduction of new tech such as wearables and augmented reality, there are going to be major advancements in the area over the coming years. By developing a suite of applications in the aviation space, we would help to solidify our place as an industry expert.

Keywords:
Software tools, Software tools, computer system architecture, User-centered Design, Avionics, development environments, Human-Computer Interaction, mobile operating systems, mission planning