Honeywell, IAI Tapped for Sense-and-Avoid Demonstration
Carey Smith, president, Defense and Space, Honeywell Aerospace, and Joseph Weiss, president and CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries.
Honeywell announced that it is partnering with Israel Aerospace Industries to develop a sense-and-avoid capability for IAI’s Heron family of unmanned aircraft, and plans to demonstrate it in 2018.
The deal, announced at the Farnborough Air Show in the United Kingdom, was selected by the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation following a competitive review process that evaluated projects from many companies, according to Honeywell. The BIRD Foundation was set up by the U.S. and Israel in 1977 to pursue industrial research and development useful to both countries.
“Sense-and-avoid solutions do not currently exist for UAS to operate in a national civilian airspace,” Carey Smith, president of Honeywell Aerospace’s Defense and Space division, said in a press release. With more manned and unmanned vehicles entering that airspace, the need for sense and avoid is increasing.”
The 2018 demonstration will be conducted by a Heron 1 UAS flying in Israeli airspace, with development work in Tel Aviv as well as Albuquerque, Minneapolis and Redmond, Washington. It will include Honeywell-developed software, algorithms, hardware and sensor fusion inputs embedded in a single prototype box that will fly on the Heron.
