15 November 2016
+VIDEO Traffic in your 12 o’clock. How many times have you heard that but simply cannot see the other aircraft? Diamond Aircraft is now testing an intelligent sensor system to detect and avoid potential obstacles in the air and on the ground – a pair of ‘super eyes’.
The Intelligent Vision System has been developed by Diamond working with the Austrian Institute of Technology and tested in flight with a Diamond DA42 MPP light twin aircraft. It has two cameras on the aircraft nose. One is a thermal infra-red camera and the other is electro-optical – a digital camera. The two views are fused together and the system detects the obstacle, whether it’s flying or static.
In the accompanying video released by Diamond Aircraft, you can see that the system picks up a moving aircraft coming towards the test aircraft, and then links to the controls to steer away.
“Collision avoidance systems are a key technology for future unmanned aerial systems and advanced air traffic services,” said Diamond.
“The objective is to increase the safety of manned and future unmanned aviation by detecting possible collisions with both cooperative and non-cooperative obstacles, and performing avoidance manoeuvres as a last resort to avoid collisions.”
Two cameras mounted on the nose of the aircraft provide the ‘super eyes’ for in flight and ground object sensing.
Diamond Aircraft is assessing how it might use the technology with two possibilities so far. One is to integrate it with a self-flying manned aircraft – which Diamond has already flown. The other is in a conventional aircraft to increase situational awareness – an additional and more reliable pair of artificial ‘eyes’.
