hmmmm....
There were previous references to Mr (Dr?) Prata here around 16th May.
If it's true (as suggested in a reference above) that Mr Prata was all set to Rock & Roll with development of a VA detection system in 2006, and was then sacked / made redundant / moved on from CSIRO, due to no support for the work - that's quite ironic.
Note that the other primary reference to previous Prata work relates only to a system to analyze satellite data. The AVOID concept of putting (a) camera(s) on aircraft and analyzing forward-look IR data from these is hardly documented or advertised at all, as far as I can see. No peer-reviewed reports, with actual results, that I could find.
I'm still having huge problems envisaging how a mass of real-time FLIR data from aircraft cameras is going to get integrated and then used to revise routeing and height instructions from NATS, etc. to aircraft in flight..... Putting a camera on a single aircraft, processing the data on-board, presenting it to the pilot (somehow), and then allowing him/her to make (independent?) decisions about what to do next seems highly suspect to me! And that assumes that the processed data has enough precision about the range, height, density of any VA cloud(s) detected to be useful in minute-to-minute decision-making.
OTOH, TWO sideways-looking cameras collecting data about what VA might be approaching a route or retreating from it, and updating a central database available to dispatchers, cres and ATC - maybe that's another, better idea.
Last edited by brooksjg; 4th Jun 2010 at 16:06.