Bird Strike Warning System

Abstract

Safety is an important and indispensable factor at aviation. Bird strike to aircraft affects and decreases the safety of aviation. Bird strike events increase due to the increasing air traffic demand and number of birds settling around the airports. Bird strikes put the flight safety at risk and also cause million dollars of damage, therefore So requirement for a warning system against them has been increasing day by day. In this study, a novel warning system that uses image processing techniques is proposed as an alternative to the conventional systems against to the bird strike events. At this warning system, background subtraction algorithm is used to produce a visual warning for the bird strike risk to alert the air traffic controller at the airports. In this paper a conceptional design of such a bird strike warning system with image processing is carried out. The desired system will have an embedded platform and two stationary cameras. The cameras will be placed the both ends of runways. By this way the system can detect the birds in two most important regions; inside the final approach course and initial climb area. It is known that most of the bird strikes primarily take place in these regions. In this way bird strike risk can be decreased especially in these regions.