Most helicopter missions flown by military forces are conducted under extreme conditions such as: very low altitude, high speed, poor visibility or night operations with incomplete or unknown terrain information. The probability of a collision with difficult to detect obstacles or terrain remains high if detection capabilities are restricted to conventional visual aids, especially during night operations.
The Problem
A pilot’s ability to see dangerous obstacles is adversely impacted by: heavy workloads, stress & fatigue, dirty windshields, low contrast light conditions or glare back light, the obscuring effects of terrain and changes in visual perspective that can occur during climb and descent. Due to the physical limitations of the human eye, even the most diligent search won’t guarantee the detection of wires and other obstacles, such as poles or trees, with the naked eye.
The Solution
HELLAS-A (Awareness) is an active scanning laser radar for the detection of obstacles, such as cables and power lines or rising terrain in the helicopter’s flight path.
HELLAS-A is a member of the HELLAS obstacle warning and terrain collision avoidance system family. It includes the only fully functional and certified obstacle warning system worldwide in operational service today.
As a result of the optimized laser scanning technology and the embedded processing performance, HELLAS-A provides the following capabilities:
- Obstacle identification, such as trees, poles and wires down to the size of a thin telephone line
- Active terrain collision avoidance
- Timely and reliable obstacle warning
- Detection probability of 99.5% within one second of obstacle appearance in its detection range
- Active detection of obstacles and terrain, without needing any database information
- Detection performance even under poor environmental conditions, such as flying toward the sun, in low light conditions (dusk, dawn) or at night
- Support of helmet-mounted sight systems
- Recording support of identified obstacles for future mission planning support
- Built for window resilience against rain, hail, bugs etc…
The Benefits
Maximize the safety of pilots,passengers, helicopters and payload Increase the operational availability of the helicopter Improve the mission success in time and performance Reduce the pilot’s workload
Human Machine Interface (HMI)
HMI obstacle symbology is overlaid on FLIR video for display on MFD and helmet mounted sight system. Additionally a dynamic safety line allows avoidance of terrain and obstacles on the flight path. Keep the flight vector above and you are safe.
Sensor Head Unit
The sensor head unit is a two-axis scanning laser detection and ranging system for the measurement of 3-dimensional geometry of objects using eye-safe laser technology.
Obstacle information is calculated and visualized by the unit on the basis of the current flight status data and the gathered obstacle scenario.
Control Panel
The control panel is comprised of primary control functions, i.e. mode functions or display/warning range selections. Secondary control functions are selectable via network interfaces.
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References
- HELLAS is in service on police, civil protection, as well as emergency medical helicopters. The system has successfully been evaluated
by governmental agencies worldwide - HELLAS-A has been contracted by Germany and Finland, the system has also been selected for the NH90 fleet of France