For long flights, the cruise is the longest phase and where the largest amount of fuel is consumed. An in-cruise optimization method has been implemented to calculate the optimal trajectory that reduces the flight cost. A three-dimensional grid has been created, coupling lateral navigation and vertical navigation profiles. With a dynamic analysis of the wind, the aircraft can perform a horizontal deviation or change altitudes via step climbs to reduce fuel consumption. As the number of waypoints and possible step climbs is increased, the number of flight trajectories increases exponentially; thus, a genetic algorithm has been implemented to reduce the total number of calculated trajectories compared to an exhaustive search. The aircraft’s model has been obtained from a performance database, which is currently used in the commercial flight management system studied in this paper. A 5% average flight cost reduction has been obtained.
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Twirre is a new architecture for mini-UAV platforms designed for autonomous flight in both GPS-enabled and GPS-deprived applications. The architecture consists of low-cost hardware and software components. High-level control software enables autonomous operation. Exchanging or upgrading hardware components is straightforward and the architecture is an excellent starting point for building low-cost autonomous mini-UAVs for a variety of applications. Experiments with an implementation of the architecture are in development, and preliminary results demonstrate accurate indoor navigation
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Over the past decade, journalists have created in-depth interactive narratives to provide an alternative to the relentless 24-hour news cycle. Combining different media forms, such as text, audio, video, and data visualisation with the interactive possibilities of digital media, these narratives involve users in the narrative in new ways. In journalism studies, the convergence of different media forms in this manner has gained significant attention. However, interactivity as part of this form has been left underappreciated. In this study, we scrutinise how navigational structure, expressed as navigational cues, shapes user agency in their individual explorations of the narrative. By approaching interactive narratives as story spaces with unique interactive architectures, in this article, we reconstruct the architecture of five Dutch interactive narratives using the walkthrough method. We find that the extensiveness of the interactive architectures can be described on a continuum between closed and open navigational structures that predetermine and thus shape users’ trajectories in diverse ways.
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