HENSOLDT and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) yesterday at Aero India announced a collaboration agreement covering Design/IPR Transfer for Design and Manufacturing of Obstacle Avoidance System (OAS) for Indian Helicopters and potential future exports.

Helicopter accidents during low level flights have been a matter of concern for both civil and military helicopters. Pilot assistance through enhanced situational awareness is required for quick reaction. Obstacles in the flight path or close to it often pose a threat to helicopters. Such obstacles may be power lines, aerial cableways, pylons and towers. The probability of occurrence of such threats increases during low-level flight manoeuvres.

The system provides smart visual cues to pilots to reduce their workload and thereby increasing flight safety and the certainty of mission effectiveness, particularly in crucial mission phases under adverse visual conditions.

Where human eyesight alone is not enough, powerful software processes and combines information from sensors and databases and presents it in visual format.

Obstacle Avoidance system from HENSOLDT, Germany is LiDAR based sensor with Synthetic vision and 3D conformal symbology to detect the objects and terrain and provide assistance to the pilot through safety lines and 3D conformal symbology based synthetic vision thereby enhancing situational awareness to increase flight safety during Degraded Visual Environment and the certainty of mission success of Helicopter fleet.

“This collaboration between HAL Korwa and HENSOLDT is first of its kind in Indian Defence Industry with intention of transferring of Critical Key Technology from Germany to India giving boost to ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ in Indian Defence Sector. The finalisation of the ToT including IPR for the equipment is primarily proposed for ALH helicopter and expected to be a major equipment fit in all future upgrade/new helicopter programme with enhanced features with suitable improvement & customization by HAL Korwa.” said Apurba Roy, ED, HAL Korwa.

Andleeb Shadman, MD, HENSOLDT India, added “HENSOLDT is optimistic and dedicated to supporting the Indian government's vision of "Atma Nirbhar Bharat" in the Indian defence sector. Our business plans are built on Transfer of Technology, Local Production and Joint development based Industrial collaborations”. We believe that our collaboration with HAL for OAS is going to be the pioneering milestone, a bold step in the right direction.