Advanced Techniques for Combat System Training

Not Available Low-flying aircraft such as helicopters are exposed to the danger of flying into suspended electrical and telephone cables. We propose a hybrid passive/active optical system that can detect and range thin cables, thereby enabling the prevention of potentially catastrophic accidents. Our system makes use of a (mid-wave infrared) sensitive CCD camera and sophisticated image processing software to passively detect suspended cables. Under some conditions, it is expected that an active source will be required for cable illumination, hence, the dual nature of our system. Cables are actively located by scanning the field-of-view with a laser beam, imaging the scattered light with the same CCD camera used in the passive system, and processing the data. In addition to being able to alert the pilot to the presence of a cable, the active system permits ranging so that the distance to the cable becomes known. Our system will be able to examine at least a 10-degree field-of-view and be able to detect a 1-cm diameter wire at a range of greater than 600 m in a time less than 1 second.