The United Kingdom’s Highly Innovative Technology Enablers in Aerospace (HITEA) program announced on Thursday that its proof-of-concept, laser-based aircraft tracking system HYPERION has been successfully tested in-flight.
HYPERION was designed to aid disaster relief workers in monitoring, surveying, search and rescue, and other humanitarian missions to send detailed images more rapidly back to the ground for analysis. It could also enable future airliners to share large amounts of technical and performance data gathered by on-board sensors to various ground crews at destination airports.
The University of Oxford assisted in the effort while the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Airbus Group Innovations provided funding for the project.
“HYPERION has clear potential to develop into a technology solution addressing the requirements of UAV operators, who need real-time access to increasing amounts of mission data for surveillance, agriculture and disaster relief,” Yoann Thueux, research team leader at Airbus Group Innovations, said. “HYPERION could also address the needs of the space sector, by allowing data download from micro-satellites in low Earth orbit.”
With further development, researchers hope HYPERION could be introduced to commercial aircraft within the next three to five years.