Smartplane

Smartplane was a start-up aerospace company that intended to create an aircraft that isn’t just fun to fly, but one that would make personal flight a viable mode of transportation. In addition to featuring advanced aircraft design, the most important aspects of the aircraft were the Smartpilot avionics, Smartflight flight planning system, and Smartstar 24/7 onboard support that would completely remove many of the complexities of flying, making our aircraft “as easy to fly as a car is to drive.”

Smartplane prototype aicraft was a modern light sport aircraft with clean lines for two people, ample room for luggage and a super strong airframe made of advanced composite materials. The aircraft interior was ergonomically and aesthetically designed for user-simplicity, comfort and serenity and its engine was highly fuel efficient (35+ mpg) with a range of 1,000 miles non-stop at up to 140 miles per hour.

The uniqueness of this aircraft is embedded in the Smartpilot avionics that allows the aircraft to intelligently collaborate with the pilot. This advanced technology was complemented by the Smartflight web-based flight planning application and Smartstar, a private flight assistance center.

My responsibilities within this project were focused on the design and development of the path planning algorithm for the Smartflight web-based flight planning application (see image below). The algorithm was able to efficiently compute the best possible route, including the best time of departure and best destination airport based on weather forecasts, time to destination and airspace limitations. For this task, I had to analyze and process huge data sets of meteorology and terrain information (Big data).