Avionics News May 2021 - 31

Enhanced vision may be No. 2,
but it's anything but second-best
Like head-up display technology, enhanced vision is an
incredible tool for improved situational awareness in lowvisibility situations. Like many of its other innovations,
Universal Avionics is working hard to make a great
technology better.
As Yahav explained, the company's next-generation
enhanced vision system will borrow video content analysis
capabilities from the automotive industry and bring those
benefits into the cockpit.
" While you can look at our current enhanced vision displays
and see a lot more than you can with your naked eye, we're
taking inspiration from the newest trends in the automotive
industry to identify objects, people, vehicles and obstacles, " he
said. " Obviously, it's much more challenging in the aerospace
market, but based on our enhanced vision system, we are well
along in developing a system that not only sees better than the
pilot but can automatically provide guidance and alerts based
on that information. "
The future of integrated flight
management systems
The third emerging product that Yahav discussed is the
company's new-generation interactive flight management
system, or i-FMS.
" Since our beginning, we have delivered over 40,000 flight
management system LRUs, making it the leader in many
platforms, " Yahav explained. " We have taken that foundation
and redesigned our FMS to become a software-based system.
We have a launch customer for the product, and once it's
certified, we can put it practically anywhere. "
According to the company, the i-FMS is a flexible and
open-architecture system that can be hosted on a variety of
current hardware platforms. It enables new concepts in humanmachine interface such as augmenting head-down displays
with ClearVision head-up displays, and head-wearable displays
allowing pilots to fly by sight.
In addition, the i-FMS tackles one of the main challenges
pilots face today with FMS operations; the need to manually
enter changes to the FMS during critical phases of flight such
as takeoff and landing.
Typically, during this time, pilots are required to shift
their attention from outside the cockpit window to the FMS
display unit - to reprogram the FMS and validate that changes
are correct - requiring last-minute updates and significant
head-down operations. The i-FMS allows pilots to project
waypoints and information from the FMS onto the real world,
superimposed on UA's HUD or SkyLens HWD.
" Because this is a sophisticated piece of software, it will

ultimately interact with existing systems with no need to rewire
the airplane or change components, " Yahav said. " The entire
i-FMS activity can be very well integrated with a variety of
different platforms. "

Featuring a software-based, flexible open-architecture system,
Universal's interactive flight management system (i-FMS) can run
on a variety of hardware options - from OEM supplied platforms, to
commercial or paramilitary versions.

Universal Avionics' GIII
Not surprisingly, when it came time to pick the ideal aircraft
to act both as a certification mule and a flying demonstrator, the
company's choice was the venerable Gulfstream GIII.
" We chose the Gulfstream GIII because it offered both a
large cabin and it was the last of its type to still have federated
avionics and systems, " Yahav said. " The GIV had a fullyintegrated flight deck. The federated cockpit allowed us to keep
the original autopilot and other systems, but it's still upgradable
in terms of its displays and other avionics. "
According to the company, the Gulfstream's cockpit
features the latest in Universal Avionics systems, including its
interactive human machine interface technologies for enhanced
head-up/head-down coordination.
It also has Universal Avionics' InSight integrated
flight deck solution with EFI-1040 displays, featuring
the company's new interactive synthetic vision system.
Complementing the new flight deck displays is the new
i-FMS, the ClearVision EFVS, EVS-5000 enhanced vision
system camera, and SkyLens HWD.
" The InSight display system upgrade is an excellent choice
for high-end platforms thanks to its flexibility to work with
installed systems that are still viable, " Yahav said. " Operators
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Avionics News May 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News May 2021