The Navy, along with other military forces, is transitioning to operations which increasingly rely on the integration of unmanned air systems. Pathfinder Systems Inc. proposes an affordable, fully passive collision avoidance system to be installed on-board both manned and unmanned aircraft to improve airspace management, including the reduction of labor-intensive practices. 360 continuous video coverage is coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods to identify aircraft and other hazards to navigation. DACAS ( Demonstration of Automated Collision Avoidance System) identifies potential collisions through the implementation of high-resolution miniature cameras, and Deep Neural Networks trained to detect and track objects, then gives real-time data on board the flight. We currently have a flight-tested working prototype that was accepted by the US Air Force in March 2019. The efforts from this $2.7M investment from the USAF along with our own $500K IRAD investment will both aid in furthering this system. Because of the development effort invested in this prototype, we have eliminated a significant amount of the technical risk associated with this technology and have a solid foundation to move forward with a solution that meets the US Navys specific needs.
Benefit: Pathfinder Systems envisions many benefits of DACAS not only for defense purposes but private commercial applications as well. DACAS will provide a low-weight, low-cost collision avoidance capability that can be widely deployed to increase air safety significantly. Millions of consumer drones weighing less than 55 pounds are currently in operation; these will be able to integrate the DACAS collision avoidance capability. DACAS can be incorporated into a large number of manned and unmanned aircraft platforms, allowing a broad audience to benefit from this system. DACAS passive sensing system offers an enormous strategic advantage to the US Department of Defense (DoD) because it enables covert operations. DACAS is a vital tool to facilitate the future seamless integration of UAS into the airspace.
Keywords: Sense & Avoid, Sense & Avoid, refueling, Aircraft carrier, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Neural Nets, collision avoidance, passive, Unmanned Carrier Aviation
