For over 30 years, Intellisense Systems has completed bespoke research and technology developments for a variety of singular circumstances. These developments include innovations in full-color night vision to aid first responders search-and-rescue operations, real-time image enhancement that can improve video resolution, and structural sensors that determine the strength and resiliency of parachute cords. Every piece of specialized equipment devised by Intellisense bolsters the user’s awareness, improves decision-making, and ultimately, saves lives.
The Air Force sought a customized solution when it needed a means of calibrating deployable instrument landing systems (D-ILS) in adverse conditions like natural disasters. The Air Force supplies critical support and humanitarian aid following natural disasters, and occasionally they need to land aircraft in areas with low visibility or low-ceiling weather conditions. Under these conditions, a D-ILS provides short-range guidance to aircraft to approach a runway via a localizer that delivers horizontal guidance and a glideslope for vertical guidance.
Calibrating and validating this data, however, is a hugely expensive and logistical challenge. Many times, the localizer and glideslope data need to be acquired or calibrated by fixed-wing aircraft, which can cost upwards of $10,000 per flight. While GPS systems could theoretically replace traditional instrument landing systems, their reliability may suffer in denied terrain or adverse weather. The Air Force wished to bolster its D-ILS capabilities by putting out a competitive solicitation to develop a new flight inspection tool that was rapidly deployable, cost-effective, and met Federal Aviation Administration requirements.
To address the unique need, Intellisense developed a first-of-its-kind solution by leveraging previous developments in D-ILS technology into a compact, quickly deployable, cost-effective landing survey tool. This system delivers fast, precise, reliable, and automated measurements by combining electromagnetic field measurement technologies with a state-of-the-art precision unmanned aerial system (UAS). It also greatly reduces the amount of manpower needed to calibrate D-ILS terrain in bad weather or harsh terrain.
The robotic system that Intellisense devised consists of an unattended ground station, a multirotor UAS platform capable of vertical takeoffs and landings, and a pilot. The ground station and the UAS create a 3D volume scan of the landing area and automatically calibrate that data via software. These components are far lighter and compact that previous D-ILS calibration tools, and they achieve comparable accuracy. The instruments also require only 2-3 service members to set up and operate rather than a crew of a fixed-wing aircraft.
The development of this system addressed the Air Force’s needs in three key areas:
- Reduced Cost – Testing revealed that the operational costs of this system were dramatically lower than those of a manned aircraft, saving the Air Force an estimated more than $5 million per year. It was designed to be low cost, low-maintenance, and at lower lifecycle costs.
- Rapidly Deployable – Compared to legacy D-ILS calibration methods, the system can be rapidly deployed for data collection and analysis. The automation of UAS-based flight calibration also greatly expedites the deployment process.
- Flexible Area Coverage – Because this system employs a multirotor UAS, it can obtain more measurements in a faster fashion in a given region than a fixed-wing aircraft, which requires multiple loops to obtain the same measurements. Additionally, the selectable airborne measurement profiles, pre-flight planning, and long range and on-station time allow flexible and precise coverage over the D-ILS zones.
In testing, the system proved to be cost-saving, faster, and more accurate than the legacy D-ILS calibration methods, representing a transformational capability for the Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense. It not only supports the goal of technological superiority for the U.S. Military, but the engineers at Intellisense also found many applications in commercial aviation. Thanks to this new tool, the calibration of D-ILS equipment in adverse terrain without having to fly manned, fixed-wing aircraft will ultimately decrease costs and risk, as well as keep people out of harm’s way when delivering humanitarian aid.