Robert J Morton

Personal Project Moving Map Applet: a demonstrator in principle of a flight guidance system whose function is to steer an aircraft from an origin to a destination via a route, where a route is defined as a set of way points joined by 'great circle' arcs using an ellipsoidal model of the earth. robmorton@clara.net SEE WARNING

For commercial reasons this applet covers only the essence of the full system. It is here simply to illustrate my knowledge and skill in this subject.

If your browser were Java-enabled you would see - and be able to use and play with - my moving map applet.

The moving map is shown in the style of a 'head-up display' as if you are remotely piloting an aircraft with a forward-view camera. (Clouds picture courtesy Microsoft Office.) The applet's window and controls, and also the navigational classes which control the flights are described below. Please bear in mind that the flights can take a long time.

The Applet Window

• a Canvas airmap.class upon which the map is painted
• a Panel navpanel.class on which the Lats, Longs, bearings etc are shown
• a Panel selroute.class with radio buttons for selecting the route to be flown
• a Panel selmap.class with radio buttons for selecting the scale of the map
• a Panel butpanel.class containing the Start, Reset, Next, Prev buttons

movmap passes all button events straight to the subsidiary panel classes which then handle these events.

Navigational Functions

• aircraft.class expedites and controls the movement of the aircraft
• wpini.class builds and establishes a database of waypoints and routes
• route.class sets up and manages progress along a given route
• waypnt.class contains and provides access to waypoint data
• wpenc.class manages the flight geometry of an encounter with a waypoint
• navconst.class is an interface containing useful navigational constants

Flight is facilitated by movmap's run() method calling a method in route.class every half second which in turn calls appropriate methods in the other classes to move and guide the aircraft. Please note that these classes specifically omit means for integrating with other air traffic. Also absent are software connections to real-world sub-systems such as gyro-compass, Navigational Aids Receiver and GPS.

This applet is a demonstration version of a navigation aid which I had previously developed in 'C'.