Jay Clemens
Honeywell and Israel Aerospace Industries have forged a partnership to develop a sensor system for IAI’s Heron unmanned aircraft systems product line with funds from the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation.
The sense-and-avoid technology will utilize Honeywell’s software, algorithms, hardware and inputs from various sensors contained in a line-replaceable unit to help track nearby aircraft and avoid collision through IAI’s avoidance maneuvering logic, Honeywell said Monday.
The companies will develop the sense-and-avoid system in New Mexico, Minnesota and Washington in the U.S. as well as in Israel.
“Sense-and-avoid solutions do not currently exist for [UASes] to operate in a national civilian airspace,” said Carey Smith, president of defense and space at Honeywell’s aerospace unit.
“With more manned and unmanned vehicles entering that airspace, the need for sense-and-avoid is increasing.”
Honeywell said the team will test the technology on the Heron 1 medium-altitude, long-endurance UAS platform in 2018 in the Israeli airspace.
It will then integrate the complete sense-and-avoid system into the Heron family of UASes in efforts to introduce the unmanned aircraft to civilian airspace and aid in the certification of avionics and platform systems.
