How not to Collide
By SvEE and GE
This is the latest on birds, locusts and aircraft:
- For observation, birds are the most important, but locusts are best; airplanes are not too good. More is known about locusts as they are very uniform and numerous and very easy to view and dissect. There are less than a hundred cells involved between the eyes, which receive sensory inputs, from a narrow angle ahead. If anything is sensed approaching, within the narrow danger angle, a simple signal is sent: "Dodge!", within a few hundreds of a millisecond. There are no known fatalities. Whether this is because of reliability of the system or the intrinsic low risk of injury, or is because of small sizes and low speeds, is not known.
- The only documented risk to birds from collision is not with other birds but with aircraft. The result is usually fatal for the bird(s) but can also be a disaster for the aircraft, its pilots and passengers. There has been little evidence of airplanes trying to avoid birds, except to scare birds (especially geese) away, or create obstacles to the areas likely to be invaded by airplanes. See: http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/1437/srg_acp_00018-01-030303.pdf.
- Below is an article on how birds collide with buildings, usually because they are not used to glass; so, do not detect that it is an obstacle which cannot be flown through. RDL will avoid transparent canopies which could look like an escape route. Perhaps, an image of a flying hawk on the window, from outside, but clear from the inside, would be effective. See: www.eartheasy.com/article_birds_windows0704.htm
- Airplanes neither have an efficient, automatic, cheap way of detecting and avoiding relatively small objects (like geese) flying in the air, nor pilots who have been trained to avoid them
- The best approach is to avoid the expensive solutions for airplanes and to copy the efficient, automatic, cheap, way of locusts, (up-scaled up to work for the much larger 0-to-10-passenger autogyros) for detecting anything which has an unvarying bearing angle within a sixty degree cone, centered on the line of path, directly ahead. The general rule is to pass over anything approaching from below, but hold the altitude (if danger is coming from above the flight path) and divert to right or left to avoid an unvarying bearing angle, with that, or anything else. That simple solution can almost always be successful, if there is only one danger to avoid. If there are several dangers at the same time, so that, if one is dodged, it exposes another, or something more complex, it is likely that there has been a planned attack. In that case, the best course is to destroy the nearest attacker(s) or, as many as possible, in that order. Unless properly armed, the ability to call for help by someone who is armed, may be the only remaining possibility. For this reason, large flocks are accompanied by a armed escorts, much like marine convoys. Else, small flocks can be accompanied by (or, if a sole traveler, be itself) an armed Master Chief Super Hawk MK0 [MCSH-MH0], a version of Gavin Hawk
- Below are sources important for discovery of the mechanism of avoiding collision (See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust and jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/163/1/231.pdf.)
- Putting together this information with the idea of artificial neural networks, as: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network, incorporated into an operating autopilot, installed into every pilotless autogyro [GH], controlled by a pilot/air-traffic-controller [PATC] is the immediate goal of RDL. Obviously, training the artificial neural network is next required (See: www.thedacs.com/techs/neural/neural3.php.)
- Starters for autopilots are on:
Kestrel Autopilot:
http://www.procerusuav.com/productsKestrelAutopilot.php,
http://www.procerusuav.com/productPricing.php.
- Quotes from above: "With
the Virtual Cockpit, users can interact with micro air vehicles in a variety of
different modes, including stick and rudder, altitude-heading-velocity commands
and dynamic way-point specification. It allows operators to configure, monitor,
issue commands to the autopilot and ground station wireless communications
hardware, upload flight plans and change way-points – all while the UAV is in
the air. Controlling and managing multiple vehicles in the air (also convoy
following support with movable home position) is made easier with new intuitive
interfaces and real-time UAV status information for each UAV is always present."
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