Latest News

Israel Airports Authority and X-Sight Systems sign a major contract

X-Sight have just released details of their contract to supply FODetect to Ben-Gurion International Airport (BGIA) in Tel Aviv, Israel.

From the press release:

The IAA’s selection of the FODetect® system for BGIA followed a rigorous two year evaluation process. The IAA determined that the Xsight FODetect® system is the best fit to the airport’s runway performance requirements. Furthermore, the IAA is confident that the FODetect® system will reduce the risk of FOD damage to aircrafts and thus increase flight safety for all passengers & cabin crew members alike.

I believe that the FODetect system was the only system that underwent an evaluation at BGIA. I also believe this is the first sale of a FODetect system.

Source (press release)

Dr FOD explains the dangers of Foreign Object Damage

These old RAF videos are not very politically correct, but they are informative.

Patent News – iFerret

A US patent application has been published for Stratech’s FOD detection system (iFerret). Here’s the abstract and link.

Abstract:

A surveillance system and method for detecting a foreign object, debris, or damage (FOD) on a runway. The system comprises one or more cameras for capturing images of the runway; and an image processing system for detecting the FOD on the runway based on adaptive image processing of the images captured by the cameras; wherein the surveillance system is adaptively operable for FOD detection under both day and night ambient light conditions without assisted illumination such as infrared or laser illuminators.

patent:20110063445
title = “RUNWAY SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM AND METHOD”,
number = “20110063445”,
author = “Chew, Khien Meow David (Singapore, SG)”,
year = “2011”,
month = “March”,
url = “http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2011/0063445.html

FAA report on Tarsier evaluation

The FAA have published their report on the evaluation of QinetiQ’s FOD detection system (Tarsier), entitled “Performance Assessment of a Radar-Based Foreign Object Debris Detection System”. The report also summarizes the Tarsier Toolbox application (p30-p33). You can grab the report here.

In 2004, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airport Technology Research and Development Team initiated a research program to conduct a performance assessment of the QinetiQ, Ltd. Tarsier Foreign Object Debris (FOD) detection radar system. The purpose of this assessment was to identify key operational characteristics and limitations of the system at an active air carrier airport, including the system’s ability to detect objects of various shapes, sizes, and materials at all locations on the runway surface. The system’s ability to detect FOD during both nighttime and daytime conditions, in periods of sun, rain, mist, fog, and in light and heavy snow was also assessed. In January 2005, the FAA developed plans for a comprehensive performance assessment of the technology at the Providence T. F. Green International Airport. Installation of the Tarsier system was completed in April 2007. Extensive data collection campaigns were conducted from June 2007 to March 2008. At the conclusion of the data collection process, the FAA had sufficient data to conclude the performance assessment. The QinetiQ Ltd. Tarsier FOD detection radar system was found to detect the necessary objects of various shapes, sizes, and materials on the runway surface and was able to perform satisfactorily in nighttime, daytime, sun, rain, mist, fog, and snow conditions, as required by FAA Advisory Circular 150/5220-24, “Airport Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Detection Equipment.”

Source (FAA Downloads)

New VP Sales & Marketing at Xsight

The company behind the FODetect system, Xsight, seem to be going through a shake-up of their management team at the moment, Amnon Katchalski has just joined as VP of Sales & Marketing. They (via Thales) have also launched a new brochure for their FODetect and FODspot products. You can grab the brochure in PDF format here.

Here’s what Xsight have to say about their new VP:

Mr. Katchalski brings 20 years of international sales, marketing, business development and professional services experience to Xsight Systems. Mr. Katchalski’s technology expertise encompasses image processing, speech recognition and data communications.

Prior to Xsight, as HTS VP Sales & Marketing, Mr. Katchalski expanded the legacy US market to include the European and Asian markets. HTS specializes in advanced image processing solutions for the transportation market. At Comverse Technology, as the AT&T Wireless Marketing Program Director, Mr. Katchalski has been instrumental in introducing the Voice Activated Dialing Service to AT&T Wireless subscriber base. Prior to Comverse, as Phonetic Systems (start-up, acquired by Nuance) Professional Services Manager, Mr. Katchalski established and managed the company’s US office professional services activities.
Mr. Katchalski earned his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

Source (Xsight web site)

TREX Aviation Systems at LinkedIn

TREX (the company behind FOD Finder) have started a company page at LinkedIn. If you’re a LinkedIn member then you can choose to “follow” them.

Automated Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Detection System Evaluation

The FAA have updated their page summarizing the evaluation of the four FOD detection systems. They also link to the relevant FAA circulars.

The FAA evaluated four types of automated FOD detection systems at four large US airports, including the Theodore Francis Green State Airport in Providence, Rhode Island, Boston Logan International Airport, Chicago O’Hare, and Chicago’s Midway Airport. The four different FOD detection systems were installed and evaluated at one of these airports. Key operational characteristics of each FOD detection system were evaluated, documented, summarized, and then published as FAA Final Reports, which are available, as they are published, on this web site under Downloads-Safety. Specific issues that were looked at include the system’s ability to located FOD items, accuracy, speed, and capability to trigger alerts to airport personnel.

Source (FAA)

100th article

This is the 100th article to appear on FOD-detection.com, so this seems like a good time to let our readers know of some upcoming changes to the site.

We have always put our effort into aggregating and commenting on all the news relevant to the FOD detection industry, and this has proven to be a useful resource for those in the aviation sector who are concerned with FOD. Keeping up-to-date is great, but it’s also nice to have a reference section where people can quickly get answers to some frequently asked questions e.g. where are the current FOD systems deployed? How much can a FOD system reduce risk on a runway? How do the systems compare on features?

Over the next few months I plan on answering some of these questions (and more) by adding dedicated pages to the site, this is of course in addition to keeping the home page up-to-date with all the latest news. Today, I have launched a beta version of the FOD Risk Calculator, originally a downloadable spreadsheet, now an interactive part of the site. It allows anyone to quickly compare FOD systems using parameters such as detection time and probability of detection, or to compare any of the systems against manual FOD checks.

The 2nd page to be added will be an interactive map showing the current deployment of FOD systems (sales only, not trials or demos), along with details of the number of runways covered etc. I’m still working on this page, it should be up and running within the next couple of weeks.

 

Keeping up-to-date with FOD-detection.com

Just a short post to let people know that I’m making a small change to the methods readers can use when subscribing to FOD-detection.com.

Previously, the RSS feed, email Newsletter, and Twitter feed have all contained identical items, i.e. a list of published articles. In future, the Twitter feed will contain some extra information, typically links to FOD stories that might not be worthy of an article on the website (for example, they might not be related to detection, but might still be of interest to some).

Crash at Cork International Airport

There has been a crash at Cork International Airport, six people have been reported dead. For more news see the BBC here, or the Google realtime results.

The Irish Aviation Authority have issued the following statement:

1015hrs 10 February 2011: Flight Avia No FLT400C a metroliner SW4 with ten passengers and two crew has crashed at Cork Airport. No details of injuries or fatalities are available. The aircraft made an approach to Runway 17 in low vis conditions (Category 2) and went around and did not land and attempted a second landing on Runway 35. The aircraft then went around a second time and came back for an approach to Runway 17. On the second approach to Runway 17 the aircraft crashed adjacent to Taxiway C. Rescue and Fire crew are in attendance. There is a fire and debris has been scattered onto the runway and over a wide area. The accident will be investigated by the Air Accident Unit of the Dept. of Transport. This is correct at this time and may be amended as more detail becomes available. (source)

My thoughts go out to the friends and family of those involved.

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