ADVANCED NEXT GENERATION LANDING SYSTEM

Project Information

ANGELS

Grant agreement ID: 698530

DOI

10.3030/698530

Project closed

EC signature date 30 November 2015

Start date 1 December 2015

End date 31 October 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 2 318 163,75

EU contribution

€ 1 622 714,63

Coordinated by

PALU SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ANGELS (ADVANCED NEXT GENERATION LANDING SYSTEM)

Reporting period: 2016-11-01 to 2017-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ANGELS is a situational awareness enhancement for rotorcraft operations, designed to aid approach and landing operations for both onshore and offshore operations, to improve safety in challenging environments. ANGELS builds on existing ADS-B infrastructure and equipage; it is available for the price of an optical guidance system.
ANGELS focuses in a very specific scenario: Helicopters A&L operations to helidecks installed in windparks and on Oil/Gas (O/G) rigs (our primary market), where poor visibility (optical guidance systems provide insufficient support), complex glide paths (not straight line approaches), high density of obstacles and reduced space are a constant, and where decision makers (usually helidecks manufacturers and helicopter transport companies) are very sensitive to price/performance ratio, who need affordable approach guidance systems.
ANGELS makes use of standards and context aware customizable predictive software to dramatically increase the level of safety in Approach & Landing (A&L) operations.
It consists of a ground station placed on the helideck and an app for iPad used by the pilot. System is designed to be certifiable for future “for credit” operations.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During these 12 months the consortium has worked on the following tasks:
Development of different parts of ANGELS (ground station, Approach and Landing Algorithm, iPad App), integration of these parts and test of interfaces.
Assessment with aeronautical authorities and main market players of the actual interest of the project, integration with other ongoing EU projects (SESAR,…) and actual regulations, product market positioning .
Design of the graphic interface and operation of the App with respect of the actual pilot POV, and development of a cloud server for different types of users.
During the second period, main effort has been devoted to:
• Alfa, Beta and Final tests of the system
• Improving of components
• Communication and dissemination activities (events, expo…)
• Launch on the market

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ANGELS has been developed as an innovative solution to improve safety and efficiency of visual approach and landing operations of rotorcrafts (support to VFR), especially within challenging environments. The final product has resulted into a much more powerful system that is able to support the aircraft instrumental operations (IFR), by reducing the flight “minima” (helideck constraints).
Our interviews with stakeholders and pilots have shown that ANGELS may be very useful also for on-shore application like Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) and private helidecks. ANGELS is able to provide a wide range of relevant information including the status of the helicopter flight and landing, the helideck status and issues that are very helpful both to the helicopter operators and platform operators (weather data, wind force, helicopter bearing…). The system has a growth path to full “for credit” operations in multiple applications.

Approach & Landing operation from inside the Helicopter

Helicopter Approach & Landing on helidecks in a Wind-park

Rescue with a Helicopter in the sea

article on Hei Expo official magazine about ANGELS System

article on La Provincia di Como about ANGELS dissemination event

Helicopter cabin