UK Inventors Present Designs and Prototype for New Smart Electronic Location Flare for Aircraft Accident Positioning Data
SWINDON, England, November 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Two UK inventors, Software Engineer Daniel Locke and Mechanical Engineer Richard Maguire, have presented a new design for a Smart Electronic Location Flare (SELF) for aircraft. When activated through accident conditions, the SELF performs a handshake with communications satellites and directly emails the aircraft's owner and emergency services with its geo-location co-ordinates.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151109/285080 )
The Smart Electronic Location Flare (SELF) combines Force-dynamics, Thermodynamics, Fluid-dynamics and Wild-life tracking technology to produce a new type of geo-location flare that can email its location from anywhere in the world.
Radio location beacons already exist as part of the current 'Black-Box' technology, but there are difficulties with these products. Incorporated Engineer, Daniel Locke explains, "Existing black boxes are very good at recording flight data and voice recordings, but if an aircraft is lost over the sea, like the recent Air France AF446 and MH370 tragedies, the radio beacons can sink to the sea floor and are sometimes lost. If the recorder is not found within the battery life, it takes over 600 days on average to find the data recorders."
The design concept behind the new Electronic Flare is not to repeat the complete data-recording task. Rather, the SELF duplicates the radio beacon function; but instead of just emitting a radio crypto-code to be triangulated and tracked, the SELF directly emails its Latitude-Longitude co-ordinates to pre-defined email accounts. The on-board processor can also store and transmit data at regular intervals to give important drift information.
Co-inventor and Mechanical Engineer Richard Maguire explained, "We wanted the floating container to withstand crash decelerations, be low mass and give thermal and pressure protection to the electronics, as it seems likely that the stand-alone container will be housed throughout an aircraft, including areas where it is not pressurised or temperature controlled."
With Patent registration obtained, the inventing partnership is now looking to regulators and manufacturers in order to bring SELF to the international market at an attractive cost for aerospace, at around $1000 per unit. Daniel summed up their message to aircraft owners "The next time a black-box needs to be located, you should expect emails from your-SELF."
For further information on the SELF device, contact Mr Daniel Locke on +44(0)7753328961 [email protected]; or Richard Maguire on +44(0)7505-743725, [email protected].
SOURCE Smart Electronic Flares
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