SPONSORED: SECURITY SENSING


Clear sight: better visibility for helicopters on rescue missions


Ocean Insight and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, engineered a robust, adjustable camera system for helicopters capable of scanning the horizon and identifying ships during life-saving flights


S


earch-and-rescue operations present coastguards worldwide


with the critical task of saving lives and recovering property. By some estimates, the US Coast Guard carries out nearly 20,000 such missions each year. The challenge of navigating


successful search-and-rescue (SAR) missions continues to intensify, as increasing traffic from commercial vessels and pleasure craft clogs our seas and waterways. Helicopter rescue teams depend on simple, effective, reliable tools that meet demanding regulatory standards, have minimal maintenance needs and operate safely.


Engineering solutions to real-world challenges Although cameras have been used on aircraft for decades, until the last few years no such option for helicopters existed that met stringent flight certification standards for rotary wing aircraft. This gap presented an additional burden for Sikorsky’s government, military and commercial customers involved in SAR, where every available resource has the potential to save lives. With Ocean Insight’s experience in designing customised systems for rigorous industrial environments, and familiarity with engineering customised solutions to exacting standards, the firm believed that they could develop a simple, flightworthy camera setup for helicopters to help save more lives. ‘We knew the biggest


challenge of this project would be the pace of the testing,’ said Matt Kremens, Ocean Insight director of engineering for applied systems. ‘We had to be prepared to rapidly engineer new


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“We took a unit and quickly adapted, tested and integrated it for something outside its original design intent”


solutions as problems arose, without invalidating previous testing.’


Ocean Insight worked


with Sikorsky to define the parameters of the camera system, which needed to scan the horizon for ships, zoom in and identify them, and record images. Regulatory standards for airworthiness imposed additional physical and electronic requirements. Within those constraints,


plus development timelines and budget considerations, Ocean Insight re-engineered off-the- shelf components originally designed for stationary use – a high-definition camera with pan- tilt gimbal and joystick controller – into a system certified to aircraft testing standards and environmental conditions. From project inception to delivery of a


fully qualified system took less than a year. ‘With this project, we took


a unit that was designed as a land-based vision system and quickly adapted, tested and integrated it for something that was outside its original design intent,’ said Kremens. ‘The moral of the story is that with clever systems engineering, you can do novel things in spaces that aren’t usually considered.’


Expanding horizons to save lives Although Ocean Insight is best known for its spectroscopy and multispectral sensing products, the company is well equipped to engineer solutions across a range of industries and applications. Many of its customers are aware of its expertise in the basics of spectroscopy, but don’t realise that they have the application ability necessary to provide a full solution. The Sikorsky project was


undertaken by Flux Data, which


in 2019 was consolidated into Ocean Insight. The solutions engineering acumen exhibited with that project – and most of the original project team, which made the transition to Ocean Insight – has further expanded and strengthened in just the last year. After dozens of missions,


hundreds of hours of flight time and many lives saved, only two of the camera systems have ever needed maintenance, and those setups were involved in natural disasters. Sikorsky’s first customer for the system had such a positive experience that other coastguard organisations expressed interest in the life- saving technology. For those responsible for


keeping us safe – at security checkpoints, at screening locations and throughout our daily activities – an effective combination of robust sensing equipment and solutions engineering expertise can meet the challenge. EO www.oceaninsight.com


April 2021 Electro Optics 13


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