TETK Real Time

Do you want to save tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on your next test flight? Or do you want to accelerate post-flight mission analysis so that you can assess measures of performance the same day, rather than days later? You can accomplish these goals with Test and Evaluation Tool Kit’s (TETK) ability to ingest real-time data, which enables you to assess system performance and mission objectives while your test is occurring.

By monitoring on-condition geometry and the timing of flight and system data, you can inform a pilot about poor data and adjust the flight to ensure that you attain the proper test-points. If you need a deeper analysis at any point during the flight, you can temporarily pause the incoming data to interact with TETK as if you were conducting a post-flight reconstruct. This activity creates "quick looks" and other insightful analyses to further assess the current mission. By ensuring test-point attainment you can drastically reduce re-fly rates, thereby reducing program costs and shortening schedules.

You can also save the real-time data that you stream into a scenario for offline use. This way, you can start post-flight analysis immediately and quickly derive verification results. In some cases, results can inform next-day planning and execution.

So how does TETK ingest real-time data? While there are several ways to do this, AGI has created a video about a method that uses a UDP data handler to receive test data from a ground multicast system and then distribute it into STK and TETK. You can send position and attitude data into STK's real-time propagator or into external ephemeris and attitude files that are being read by STK's external propagator. You can import test data beyond position and attitude information via STK's Analysis Workbench capability and then promote it to TETK as needed. You can check out the video here. In this test flight, we assess whether an F35 is meeting a set of conditions relative to a ground site.

Interested in learning more? Check out a related video that shows how you can import real-time data from an XPlane flight into STK via a UDP port.