Abstract: A low-altitude flight guidance system for an aircraft including a warning generator that generates a warning based upon a predicted position. The system further including a first sensor system having a terrain database and a calculation module that determines a current position of the aircraft with respect to terrain stored in the terrain database and that determines a reference altitude hDB of the terrain at the current position. The system further includes a second sensor system and a module that determines a predetermined flight altitude difference ?hF at the predicted position and terrain data in a region U of the predicted position. Moreover, the system includes an altitude prediction module that predicts an altitude and forwards the predicted altitude to the warning generator. The warning is based upon the aircraft reaching, approaching, or exceeding a warning altitude limit, and the altitude prediction module determination for the predicted position is based upon a prediction set point.

Abstract: A computer implementable process for determining optimized paths for a vehicle includes the following steps: (a) evaluation of all nodes or grid points of a defined search space based on costs arising at these nodes for desired paths, starting from both a first reference node and a second reference node, and determining cost-effective desired paths starting from each respective reference node; (b) formation of cost-effective desired paths extending between the first and the second reference node including at least a combination of desired-path sections which extend from the first and second reference nodes respectively, to an intersecting point of the respective cost-effective desired paths; and (c) selection of a cost-optimized desired path extending between the first and second nodes comprising the potential combinations of desired-path sections which start from the first and second reference nodes respectively, on the basis of a defined criterion.

Abstract: A low-altitude flight guidance system for an aircraft including a warning generator that generates a warning based upon a predicted position. The system further including a first sensor system having a terrain database and a calculation module that determines a current position of the aircraft with respect to terrain stored in the terrain database and that determines a reference altitude hDB of the terrain at the current position. The system further includes a second sensor system and a module that determines a predetermined flight altitude difference ?hF at the predicted position and terrain data in a region U of the predicted position. Moreover, the system includes an altitude prediction module that predicts an altitude and forwards the predicted altitude to the warning generator. The warning is based upon the aircraft reaching, approaching, or exceeding a warning altitude limit, and the altitude prediction module determination for the predicted position is based upon a prediction set point.