New rulings are being published enabling landing operations with Enhanced flight vision system (EFVS) under reduced visibility conditions, such as with no visible references like the approach, the threshold, or the runway edge lighting systems. Recently, for example, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enabled trained pilots in the use of EFVS to continue descending 100 feet below the Touchdown Zone Elevation (TDZE), and even perform a full landing procedure with no natural vision under specific conditions. This is leading to new advanced EFVS that meet the requirements to adapt to these new regulations.
The main goal of SENSORIANCE project is to develop a cost-effective system to provide combines information from various sources, including a compact camera –consisting of a cost effective, versatile, high-performance and highly-reliable optical system— and external sensors, distributed in the form of LRU modules. This information is then processed by a computer vision and image processing module to infer useful knowledge and event-reaction capabilities, aiding pilots during all phases of flight.
SENSORIANCE system will provide a complete enhance and synthesized images suite and it will allow to enhance the field of view, to reduce the risk of occurrence of an impact, to Enable air transport system optimization, to ensure compliance with safety standards and regulations, to use ROHs components, requiring low investment in devices (COTs).
Based on these general objectives, the technical objectives of SENSORIANCE are the following:
• To develop an affordable uncooled VIS/IR sensor.
• To develop software components that will consist of several modules to perform the following tasks: manage user input and console commands, present feedback messages to the user, control hardware modules, setup and maintenance automation and computer vision functionality.
• To develop a precise mechanical assembly of lenses that will meet the different focal lengths required by the system. Image enhancement capabilities with a good compromise on cost, performance and weight will be introduced.
• To design, develop and manufacture of mechanical casing and electrical circuits under RTCA/DO-160G for the TRL5 prototype to comply with airborne hardware requirements.
• To develop different modules for image acquisition, image compression and communications via the standard Ethernet or ARINC818 interfaces.
• To design, create test environments for visualization and simulation and perform the different electrical, mechanical and environmental tests specified in the RTCA/DO-160G.
• To design a system with a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) for the LRUs of 40.000 h.
• To provide a DRI (Data Requiremente Item) that contain a qualitative assessment of the System and/or LRU BIT capability.
