Day/Night All Environment vision systems

When good visual conditions become severely limited due to low light or adverse weather, the visual cues normally used by pilots become severely degraded, requiring the use of alternative, complementary sources of information.

These must be integrated and processed to extract relevant piloting cues, which are then presented in a form that minimises additional mental interpretation and workload. No single technology will deliver this overall Day/Night All Environment(DNAE) requirement; a suite of technologies integrated together is the key to extending operational envelopes in low light and differing levels of atmospheric obscuration.

With our world class expertise in DNAE technology from many years of applied research and technology demonstration we can develop and evaluate DNAE systems to suit a multitude of different operating conditions. We are internationally respected and actively engaged in international research collaborative arrangements in this area.

Combating degraded visual conditions to improve aircrew situational awareness can be done through both head up and head down displays. For head up displays for pilots individually this is usually through the use of night vision goggles (NVGs) to which QinetiQ has added a range of enhancements to expand operational usage/usefulness for both military and civilian aircraft.

Night Vision Goggle Technologies
NVGs and associated technologies can enable day into night operations, increased situational awareness, increased night time abilities in areas such as in take-off and landing and airborne surveillance. As well as developing the NVGs themselves, QinetiQ can investigate helmet mounts, cockpit and external lighting compatibility etc.

Of particular interest and offering significant benefits in terms of training are

SHADES – an NGV filter system for simulating degraded viewing conditions which fits over the objective lens of a standard NVG.

Scene Camera – allows recordings of the pilot’s view of an NVG scene to be made fro mission analysis. The Scene Camera module attaches to the NVG eyepiece to record the pilot’s scene during a flight.

Display NVG – a lightweight module that allows symbology to be overlaid on an NVG intensified image. This reduces the time that pilots need to spend viewing head-down displays by displaying the information in the NVG scene itself.

Additionally there are low light level and infra red sensors which feed into head down displays thus enhancing the NVG vision system. These can extend flight operations into very low light conditions. They rely upon tight integration of systems and sensors coupled with software.

A particular technology useful in the context of low light levels that QinetiQ has developed in partnership has been Adaptive Image Fusion which gives a single real-time image ‘fused’ from multiple image sources. The adaptive software allows for night and poor weather conditions.