Project description
Affordable detection sensor for small aircraft
Serious accidents during landing and ground procedures necessitate an affordable collision prevention sensor for small aircraft and helicopters. Current sensors are expensive, making them inaccessible to small aircraft. To address this, the EU-funded ODESSA project aims to develop a small, light and low-cost sensor specifically designed for aeroplanes, helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles. ODESSA will incorporate the modular avionics concept, ensuring system independence, reduced maintenance efforts, and compatibility with various platforms. Leveraging millimetric radar and proven learning technologies from the automotive sector, ODESSA will deliver a reliable, compact and inexpensive solution. This sensor will enhance safety by enabling the detection of small objects and improving ground safety during handling and taxing operations.
Objective
Mid-air, near mid-air, and-on ground collisions are one of the most important cause of accident in general aviation. For this reason, engineering an affordable sensor helping pilots in preventing it could be very important in order to prevent accidents. Present sensors, indeed, are very expensive and cannot be affordable for small aircraft and helicopters.
The idea of ODESSA (Obstruction DEtection Sensor for Surveillance on Aircraft) is to provide a small, light, and low-cost sensor (comparing it to the present ones) that could be installed on both airplanes and helicopters, but on unmanned aerial vehicles too. This is possible adopting the modular avionics concepts of on-board system independency, reducing maintenance efforts, granting different platform applicability.
Using millimetric radar, learning techniques from automotive worlds, gives different advantages. One is that automotive technologies are well tested and reliable. These solutions are small, light and cheap too.
Inheriting characteristics from automotive technologies, ODESSA allows to detect small object, increasing on-ground safety during handling and taxing. An issue of these mission phases is the possibility of collision not only with aircraft (that could be minimized by using new generation ADS-B systems), but with other kinds of object (as pushbacks, cars, signals, personnel, birds…) not well detectable from aircraft unless mounting the terrestrial version of ADS-B (that requests the adaptation of the whole airport infrastructure).
ODESSA system makes possible that safety in landing and ground procedures is independent from different component of the airport system, granting danger acknowledgment in different sceneries.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CS2-IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
00131 ROMA
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.