Today's aircrews have to handle more and more complex situations. Most critical tasks in the field of civil aviation are landing approaches and taxiing. Especially under bad weather conditions the crew has to handle a tremendous workload. Therefore DLR's Institute of Flight Guidance has developed a concept for an enhanced vision system (EVS), which increases performance and safety of the aircrew and provides comprehensive situational awareness. In previous contributions some elements of this concept have been presented, i.e. the 'Simulation of Imaging Radar for Obstacle Detection and Enhanced Vision' by Doehler and Bollmeyer 1996. Now the presented paper gives an overview about the DLR's enhanced vision concept and research approach, which consists of two main components: simulation and experimental evaluation. In a first step the simulational environment for enhanced vision research with a pilot-in-the-loop is introduced. An existing fixed base flight simulator is supplemented by real-time simulations of imaging sensors, i.e. imaging radar and infrared. By applying methods of data fusion an enhanced vision display is generated combining different levels of information, such as terrain model data, processed images acquired by sensors, aircraft state vectors and data transmitted via datalink. The second part of this contribution presents some experimental results. In cooperation with Daimler Benz Aerospace Sensorsystems Ulm, a test van and a test aircraft were equipped with a prototype of an imaging millimeter wave radar. This sophisticated HiVision Radar is up to now one of the most promising sensors for all weather operations. Images acquired by this sensor are shown as well as results of data fusion processes based on digital terrain models. The contribution is concluded by a short video presentation.
Enhanced vision systems: results of simulation and operational tests
Enhanced and Synthetic Vision 1998 ; 1998 ; Orlando,FL,USA
Proc. SPIE ; 3364
1998-07-30
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English