The Omnigraph: New Steps Toward Automatic Navigation
TIREY K. VICKERS · NAVIGATION Journal of the Institute of Navigation · 1966
The advent of business jets and light jet transports, flown by two-man crews, has greatly increased the need for cockpit workload simplification. This paper describes salient features of the Omnigraph airborne navigation equipment, which has been designed to simplify to the maximum extent possible, the acquisition and presentation of navigational information for the pilot. The airborne installation includes a small digital computer, and a closed-loop pictorial display which forms the digital-to-analogue output element and also serves as a means of feeding geographical waypoint position data into the computer. Equipment checkout and setup, as well as chart and facility selection, are rendered virtually automatic. The paper describes various functions of the computer, including inter-sensor comparison, dead-reckoning backup, and the generation of auto-pilot steering signals.