Penzberg, January 2013. EMT has made another advance in the field of flight safety, which it has been researching and developing since 2004. Working in close cooperation with the BAAINBw* and engineering firm Spies, a second generation LIDAR Sense & Avoid sensor has been developed and tested. First flight tests incorporating object recognition and airborne avoidance were already successfully carried out in 2005.

Spies has been working on progressive LIDAR technology in the security field for many years, and this expertise has been put to good use in the recognition of aircraft that are not fitted with transponders. The Sense & Avoid sensor serves to recognize and automatically avoid other aircraft in the vicinity. As the LUNA tactical unmanned aircraft system (TUAS) have been equipped with ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance broadcast) transponders since 2012, the combination of transponder and active LIDAR improves flight security even more significantly.

“EMT and Spies are both delighted to be promoting Sense & Avoid technology via LIDAR and transponder – after all, this enables our unmanned aircraft system to finally take part in general air traffic (conditions). This makes advantages such as easily affordable purchasing and operational costs of unmanned aircraft systems more available to civilian customers”, says Sascha Lange, who is in charge of business development at EMT.