Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has developed rotary and fixed wing millimeter wave radar enhanced vision systems. The Helicopter Autonomous Landing System (HALS) is a rotary-wing enhanced vision system that enables multi-ship landing, takeoff, and enroute flight in Degraded Visual Environments (DVE). HALS has been successfully flight tested in a variety of scenarios, from brown-out DVE landings, to enroute flight over mountainous terrain, to wire/cable detection during low-level flight. The Radar Enhanced Vision Systems (REVS) is a fixed-wing Enhanced Flight Vision System (EFVS) undergoing prototype development testing. Both systems are based on a fast-scanning, threedimensional 94 GHz radar that produces real-time terrain and obstacle imagery. The radar imagery is fused with synthetic imagery of the surrounding terrain to form a long-range, wide field-of-view display. A symbology overlay is added to provide aircraft state information and, for HALS, approach and landing command guidance cuing. The combination of see-through imagery and symbology provides the key information a pilot needs to perform safe flight operations in DVE conditions. This paper discusses the HALS and REVS systems and technology, presents imagery, and summarizes the recent flight test results.

Date Published: 16 May 2013
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 8737, Degraded Visual Environments: Enhanced, Synthetic, and External Vision Solutions 2013, 87370G (16 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2016302

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8737:
Degraded Visual Environments: Enhanced, Synthetic, and External Vision Solutions 2013
Kenneth L. Bernier; Jeff J. Güell, Editor(s)