Tim Ripley
If the July rain showers hit Farnborough this week the place to watch the flying display and stay dry is the Defence Evaluation Research Agency (DERA) stand (D40 Hall 1). Live video footage of the aerobatics will be on display from one of the organisation's mobile Electrical Optical Trackers (EOT) on the edge of the airfield "DERA's EOT is unique," says Clive Chapman, ranges business development manager. He elaborated: "It tracks the performance of aircraft and weapons, providing data for post-trial analysis. The EOT is a high precision, auto-tracking instrument capable of carrying a large payload of various sensors, including TV cameras, Infra Red imagers, Range Only Radar and high speed film cameras."
It has the capability to automatically acquire up to five moving targets appearing within the tracking TV camera field of view and subsequently auto-track any two of these targets simultaneously. It can move 100° a second with a one ton payload.
Missile and target parameters are sent to the telemetry ground station along with television pictures from the EOT. The PC-based system, which uses commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software, provides enhancements over traditional telemetry data displays, leading to an improved human interface. Using available data the system can fuse the trajectory, attitude and telemetry data and present the output as a _3D animated, synthetic environment, providing full scenario information. One of the main advantages of this visualisation technique is the potential for expansion. Instead of producing reams of numerical printouts and cluttered displays, trials data is now available as a graphic on standard computer media.
DERA's Test & Evaluation Telemetry Manager Steve Lyons, says: "People are able to assimilate data more readily from this new visualisation tool. It is user-friendly and has the potential to be expanded."
Source: Flight Daily News