Prime contractor Cobham Aviation Services has selected Sentient Vision’s Kestrel Maritime ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging) system to...
Prime contractor Cobham Aviation Services has selected Sentient Vision’s Kestrel Maritime ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging) system to equip Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s (AMSA) new Bombardier Challenger 604 jet search and rescue aircraft.
The ViDAR system as part of sensor suite will enable unprecedented ability to visually detect and track objects and people in the water.
The four Challenger 604 business jet platform based SAR aircraft will begin to enter service in August 2016.
Kestrel Maritime ViDAR consists of a 9-megapixel optical sensor and on-board software that automatically detects and highlights sea surface objects invisible to the naked eye in real time.
In tests with the US Coast Guard in 2014 the ViDAR system detected small boats at ranges in excess of 20nm that were optically invisible to the sensor operators. Each Challenger 604 will mount three fixed ViDAR sensors and an integrated processing system to cue the primary Wescam MX-15 sensor to detected objects.
Cobham Business Development Director Anthony Patterson commented. “The real benefit we see in ViDAR is the ability to maintain a consistent quality visual search that has the same probability of detection in the first hour through to the last hour of an eight hour mission. Visual searching with the human eye is very fatiguing and diminishes over time as crew fatigue. This is the first product that offers the potential to offset the human fatigue factor for search and rescue (SAR) operations and we are very excited about the benefits to SAR outcomes.”
