ENGEL

An essential component for the autonomous flight of a helicopter is automated takeoff and landing.

The ENGEL project extends these capabilities to include landings in unprepared terrain, i.e., off-airport landings, as commonly required in rescue operations.

In a broadly established consortium led by Airbus Helicopters, which includes partners from large-scale industry, SMEs, and academia, the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI) focuses on AI-based enhancement of camera images.

The effects of rain, fog, and snow are removed from the data captured by camera systems using intelligent algorithms. The improved image data is then provided to downstream algorithms, such as obstacle detection, and displayed to the pilot.

For the development of AI, several datasets of poor-weather images in both the visual and infrared spectrum are generated. This includes data created under artificial weather conditions in the CARISSMA weather hall and using drones in natural adverse weather scenarios.

Additionally, algorithms and methods for generating synthetic poor-weather images are being tested to further expand the dataset available to the AI.