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DLR has set up a number of projects to increase flight safety and economics of aviation. Within these activities one field of interest is the development and validation of systems for pilot assistance in order to increase the situation awareness of the aircrew. All flight phases ('gate-to-gate') are taken into account, but as far as approaches, landing and taxiing are the most critical tasks in the field of civil aviation, special emphasis is given to these operations. As presented in previous contributions within SPIE's Enhanced and Synthetic Vision Conferences, DLR's Institute of Flight Guidance has developed an Enhanced Vision System (EVS) as a tool assisting especially approach and landing by improving the aircrew's situational awareness. The combination of forward looking imaging sensors (such as EADS's HiVision millimeter wave radar), terrain data stored in on-board databases plus information transmitted from ground or other aircraft via data link is used to help pilots handling these phases of flight especially under adverse weather conditions. A second pilot assistance module being developed at DLR is the Taxi And Ramp Management And Control - Airborne System (TARMAC-AS), which is part of an Advanced Surface Management Guidance and Control System (ASMGCS). By means of on-board terrain data bases and navigation data a map display is generated, which helps the pilot performing taxi operations. In addition to the pure map function taxi instructions and other traffic can be displayed as the aircraft is connected to TARMAC-planning and TARMAC-communication, navigation and surveillance modules on ground via data-link. Recent experiments with airline pilots have shown, that the capabilities of taxi assistance can be extended significantly by integrating EVS- and TARMAC-AS-functionalities. Especially an extended obstacle detection and warning coming from the Enhanced Vision System increases the safety of ground operations. The presented paper gives an overview regarding those two assistance systems and discusses possible concepts and the potential of an integrated system with respect to taxi guidance operations.
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