The University has made history through the granting of a patent by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office for creating a system that resolves runway conflicts during take-off and landing.
The invention is the work of David Zammit-Mangion, Andrew Sammut and Brian Zammit, from the University’s Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, and is the culmination of several years’ research and development with the aerospace industry.
Partly funded by the European Commission through the FP-6 contract Flysafe, the department has been working with several industrial partners in the domain of designing airborne avionic equipment to ensure aircraft do not collide during flight.
The University was tasked with the design of an airborne instrument that protects against the risk of aircraft collision on the runway during take-off or landing.
The effective mitigation of runway collisions has, for many years now, been high on the ‘wishlist’ of the aviation industry, particularly in the US.
The system electronically monitors aircraft in the vicinity of a runway. When a risk of collision is detected, it defines the path the aircraft should take to ensure that a collision is averted, and alerts the pilots accordingly to take appropriate action.
Under the Flysafe project, the inventors have been working closely with major industrial partners, including Thales Avionics, BAE Systems and the Dutch Aerospace Research agency NLR.
Besides the development of the techniques and algorithms, a number of prototypes were built to allow integration and evaluation on large flight simulatorsin Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.
Professional pilots were employed to assess the system and provide feedback on the effectiveness of the technique, with several of these coming from Air Malta, which was also a contract partner in the research programme.
The invention and results ofthe evaluation programme have been disseminated widely through several forums.
Academic papers were presented at major US and international conferences, including those organised by the highly respected American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences.
A dissemination event was held at Cranfield University to present the work. For more information, e-mail david.zammitmangion@um.edu.mt.