"A System is More Than the Sum of Its Parts" - Conclusion of DLR\´S Enhanced Vision Project "ADVISE-PRO"

Within its research project ADVISE-PRO (advanced visual system for situation awareness enhancement-prototype, 2003-2006) that will be presented in this contribution, DLR has combined elements of enhanced vision and synthetic vision to one integrated system to allow all low visibility operations independently from the infrastructure on ground. The core element of this system is the adequate fusion of all information that is available onboard. This fusion process is organized in a hierarchical manner. The most important subsystems are; a) the sensor based navigation which determines the aircraft´s position relative to the runway by automatically analyzing sensor data (MMW, IR, radar altimeter) without using neither (D)GPS nor precise knowledge about the airport geometry, b) an integrity monitoring of navigation data and terrain data which verifies onboard navigation data ((D)GPS + INS) with sensor data (MMW-radar, IR-sensor, radar altimeter) and airport/terrain databases, c) an obstacle detection system and finally d) a consistent description of situation and respective HMI for the pilot