A Systematic Approach to Degraded Visual Environments

摘要

As an integrated avionics supplier to major rotary wing programs, Rockwell Collins began investigating technical solutions to the “brownout” sand and dust phenomenon at the time military helicopter operations in desert regions increased. Ultimately, customer interest was found to include flight safety hazards beyond just “brownout” conditions. Nitial company investigative projects involved innovative sensor and flight director capabilities. During the same period the company’s commercial synthetic vision development was reaching operational maturity. Feedback from customers on the company’s degraded visual environment (DVE) initiatives indicated that a landing zone viability sensor alone was insufficient to satisfy their mission needs. Rather, the technical solution that was needed had to address flight safety hazards resulting from loss of situation awareness (SA) in many forms. Loss of situation awareness goes beyond visual obscuration. That conclusion indicates that the generalized DVE/SA solution should be a fully ntegrated avionics system augmented with situation awareness capabilities based on synthetic vision, and enhanced with sensor and processing resources tailored to the customer’s aircraft. Both civil and military rotorcraft can be served in this way. The primary constraints on the technical solution are the size, weight, power, and cost burdens that an berntolerated by the customer.