Army wants next-gen situational awareness sensors

Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $12 million Army contract to develop sensor fusion for helicopters.

Under the 40-month contract, awarded by the Army’s Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, Lockheed Martin will create a multi-modal sensor fusion (MMSF) testbed for rotary-wing aircraft.

Lockheed Martin will develop “sensor fusion and integration technologies that enhance rotary-wing aircraft survivability and enable pilots to navigate safely in all environments, even when GPS is unavailable,” according to a company news release.

“The MMSF algorithms blend data from multiple sensor types to restore a pilot’s situational awareness in degraded visual environments (DVEs).”

Lockheed Martin “will integrate government-furnished sensors in a reconfigurable, open-architecture testbed that supports the development of DVE systems for rotary-wing aircraft,” the company said. “Other activities include refining multi-modal fusion techniques and real-time 3-D mapping, and implementing symbols and cues for pilot sensor displays.”

MMSF blends sensor data to generate real-time 3-D terrain maps of the area around the aircraft.

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