Technologies to help aircraft avoid mid-air collisions.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Unmanned Vehicles

Recent flight tests of newly developed technologies are proving that it is possible to fly manned and unmanned aircraft safely in the same airspace.

"We're attacking the three or four real key enabling technologies," says Reece Clothier, project manager of the Smart Skies Project, a three-year research and development project in Australia that is focused on integrating unmanned systems into civilian airspace. It is being funded in part by the Queensland State Government Smart State Funding Program.

His team, in collaboration with Boeing Research and Technology in the United States and Australia and the Australian Research Center for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA)--a joint venture between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and the Queensland University of Technology, is helping to develop and test technologies in three areas: global aircraft separation management, aircraft tracking and onboard detection systems for collision avoidance of dynamic and static obstacles.

Boeing's airspace separation management system concept, called the automated dynamic aerospace controller, or ADAC, employs algorithms to track aircraft and resolve potential conflict situations. It can be located anywhere on the planet to provide four-dimensional separation assurance service to aircraft flying around the world.

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The mobile aircraft tracking system, a portable air traffic control radar under development by Boeing Research and Technology Australia, is capable of detecting and tracking aircraft in a five- to 10-nautical mile range. It can transmit traffic information to the ADAC, to local air traffic control and to other airspace monitors.

Finally, the detect, sense and act system is seeking to help unmanned systems perceive and avoid moving and stationary obstacles.

The team completed a full month of flight-testing of the automated dynamic airspace controller (ADAC) in July in Kingaroy, Australia, at a remote test range about four hours northwest of Brisbane. The trials were...