System for Multi-Ship Brown-Out Helicopter Landings

Brownout is the number one operational problem facing military rotorcraft today. Visual obscuration, combined with nose-up attitude during landing, make identification of landing area hazards difficult or impossible. To address this problem, CG2 has proposed a system that combines data from sensors mounted on the lead rotorcraft with telemetry to produce a synthetic vision display that allows a formation of rotorcraft to land safely. The system will generate a virtual scene using geometry extracted from LIDAR data and correlated camera imagery. The rotorcraft telemetry will be used to render a real-time scene that accurately depicts the position and orientation of each ship relative to the terrain, with recommended flight paths to the landing zone. Multiple viewpoints will allow the pilot to assess the landing area from multiple perspectives while landing. The solution will be validated in a simulation environment as well as with real sensors, and be capable of running on ruggedized, embedded hardware. Based on the design concepts proven in Phase I and the validation environment created in the Phase I Option, a prototype will be created during Phase II. The prototype will be tested both in the simulation environment and with a commercial laser sensor.