The Smart Skies research program, focusing on the development of future technologies supporting the efficient utilisation of airspace by both manned and unmanned aircraft, has won a Queensland Engineering Excellence Award.
The project, involving the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA, itself a collaboration between CSIRO and the Queensland University of Technology), Boeing Research and Technology-Australia, Insitu Pacific and the Queensland Government, is exploring development of three key enabling aviation technologies: an Automated Separation Management System capable of providing separation assurance in complex airspace environments; Sense and Act systems for manned and unmanned aircraft capable of collision avoidance of dynamic and static obstacles; and a Mobile Aircraft Tracking System (MATS) utilising a cost-effective radar and dependent surveillance systems.
The project is on track to complete its final flight trial in December 2010.
Smart Skies won the ‘Control systems, networks, information processing and telecommunications’ category of the awards, presented at a gala event in Brisbane in early October 2010.
Smart Skies will now be entered into the national Engineering Excellence Awards 2010, which will be presented in Canberra on 24 November.