CLEARING THE FOG

"What I really need is a pair of spectacles to see through the fog. . . ."--Charles A. Lindbergh.

Almost eight decades and a host of hard-won technological advances later, NASA's Langley Research Center and its government, industry and university partners are delivering the equivalent of Lindbergh's fog-penetrating spectacles.

Recent flights here on a Gulfstream V (GV) testbed demonstrated that NASA's consortium of researchers has brought "tunnel-in-the-sky" synthetic vision systems (SVS) to an impressive level of functionality. Tweaking of some features is still warranted, and a suite of enhanced-vision sensors (EVS) is yet to be fully incorporated, but a transition from research to commercial products is clearly in the offing.

The research and demo flights at Reno/Tahoe International Airport last month marked the latest phase of NASA's Aviation Safety and Security Program, which aims to cut fatal accident rates by 80% over 10 years. In 2001, similar evaluation flights on a NASA-Langley Boeing 757 were flown at Eagle County Regional Airport near Vail, Colo. Those highlighted individual elements of SVS, and garnered valuable inputs from NASA, airline, FAA and Boeing pilots (AW&ST Oct. 29, 2001, p. 78).

This summer's Reno deployment focused on integrating several SVS elements to give pilots not only excellent airborne situational awareness, but also runway incursion protection on the ground, and a means of ensuring computer-generated displays are accurate depictions of the environment. I was one of several guest pilots given the opportunity to fly in the GV's left seat and see a number of NASA and Rockwell Collins SVS concepts. Specifically, new integrated concepts included:

• Synthetic vision displays.

• A runway incursion protection system (Rips).

• Enhanced-vision sensors, such as forward-looking infrared (Flir) and advanced weather radar systems, mated with SVS images.

• Database integrity monitoring equipment.