# Presentation: 308551

## The Future Accident Recorder

**The Future Accident Recorder**

- Mike Horne, Managing Director
- AD Aerospace Ltd,
- Manchester, UK

## What do Investigators Need?

- Witness Statements
- Involved Parties
- Bystanders
- Examination of the Accident Scene
- Instruments stuck during the accident
- Any recordings of the Environment
- Weather Reports

## What do they get?

- Railroad Trip Recorders
- No Mandates
- No Statutory Requirements

- Witness Statements
- Scene of Accident
- Some Instruments
- Proposed 	Data Recorder
- 9 Parameters only!

## What do they get?

- Road
- No Mandates
- No Statutory Requirements
- UK Trucks include simple recorders

- Witness Statements
- Scene of Accident
- Some Instruments
- Audio/Video - US School Bus
- “Black Box” Recorders
- Now available on “top of the range” cars
- Two Dimensional accelerations over 5 minutes prior
- Brakes applied, indicators used

## What do they get?

- Marine Voyage Data Recorders
- European Union Mandates only on “Roll On - Roll Off” ferries
- No Internationally agreed standards

- Witness Statements
- Course Recorders
- Log Books
- Radio & Radar Recordings
- Recordings
- Ferries  - Coming soon
- Instrumentation
- Control Signals
- Tankers

## What do they get?

- Air
- Highly Regulated
- Internationally protected
- Leading the way
- Forward thinking on Recorders

- Frozen Instruments
- Audio Recording
- mandated since 1966
- Data Recording
- mandated since 1958
- Video Recording
- Eurocae WG 50
- Reports in 2000
- All new aircraft in 2005(?)

## Problems with Existing Recordings

- Too Little
- 30 minutes audio currently being increased to 2 hours
- Currently 18 parameters being raised to 88 by 2002
- Not Enough Detail
- “Why is THAT doing that?”
- “Is that supposed to be like that??”
- Data being Lost or Not Recorded
- When aircraft power fails, the recording fails
- High Intensity impacts and fire damage recordings
- Being Overtaken by New Technology
- Digital Displays are eliminating jammed instruments
- Digital messaging to the pilot replacing speech

## The Future Direction

- Digital Recording
- High Shock Resistance
- High Temperature Resistance
- High Reliability
- Improved Survivability
- 2 Hour fire test
- Power Supply independent of Vehicle
- Video Recording
- The only way to get all the available information

## School Busses

- August 1998, UK bus carrying school children crashes, after going through a red traffic light at 70mph.
- Driver initially claims that brakes were faulty
- Then claims that he was distracted by “rowdy” kids.
- Recorded Video linked to brakes and speed sensors would:
- Allow simplified investigation
- More importantly deter drivers from taking dangerous risks.

## March 6, 1987, 189 die when water rushes through open bow doors of the Herald of Free Enterprise, off Zeebrugge, Belgium.
Subsequent investigations revealed that the door closing was neither monitored nor checked
Video systems were recommended to be fitted to both prevent future disasters, and to allow investigations of similar problems

- March 6, 1987, 189 die when water rushes through open bow doors of the Herald of Free Enterprise, off Zeebrugge, Belgium.
- Subsequent investigations revealed that the door closing was neither monitored nor checked
- Video systems were recommended to be fitted to both prevent future disasters, and to allow investigations of similar problems

- Zeebrugge Disaster

##  Southall Rail Disaster

-  Southall Rail Disaster

- 20 September 1997, an Intercity 125 slammed into a freight train at Southall station, in London, England.
- 7 people killed and 160 injured
- Debates still rage as to the status of the signals, and whether they were obscured by building work.
- A video recording of the view as seen from the train driver at the time would provide the final evidence.

## Fire at Manchester - August 1985

- British Airtours Boeing 737 has fire in the left engine during take off roll
- Unable to assess the extent of the fire, the pilot actioned a standard take off abort, exiting the runway to the right
- He then conducts standard exit procedures, unaware that his fuselage is almost burnt out
- Live video pictures from external cameras, available in the cockpit would have allowed proper assessment of the situation

**Notes:**
22nd August 1985

## Accident at Kegworth - Jan 1989

- British Midlands B-737 forced to divert, following an explosion in the port engine
- Violent vibration in the flight controls stops when the _right hand_ engine is throttled back, due to increased fuel flow to the damaged engine
- Despite the passengers seeing smoke and sparks from the _left hand_ engine, the mistake is only discovered when the left engine fails completely under stress on final approach
- Live video pictures from external cameras, available in the cockpit would have allowed proper assessment of the situation

**Notes:**

Soon after the publication of the AAIB report on the Manchester fire

Air Accident at Kegworth  8th January 1989

READ THE ABOVE

The reasons why this tragic accident happened are beyond the scope of this presentation
But
There is little doubt that the extra information available to the pilot by viewing the outside of his aircraft would have been of use 

## AAIB Report 8/88

- “Research should be undertaken into methods of providing the flight deck crew with an external view of the aircraft, enabling them to assess the nature and extent of external damage and Fires”
- Following Manchester Fire - 22 August 1985
- 55 persons killed

**Notes:**
Air Accident Investigation Branch
	United Kingdom Department of Transport
	Said in their report

“Research should be undertaken into methods of providing the flight deck crew with an external view of the aircraft, enabling them to assess the nature and extent of external damage and Fires”

This report kicked off CAA action and
Also served as a “Launch Pad” for commercial research

## USAir Flight 105

- In September 1989, a Boeing 737 operated by USAir descended prematurely into Kansas City
- It was later found that the aircraft had struck electronic transmission cables 75 feet above the ground.
- The NTSB, as part of their conclusions referenced several other flights (Piedmont Airlines at Charlotte (1986); Midwest Express at Milwaukee (1986) ; Delta Airlines at Dallas (1988)) where cockpit video recordings would have been useful.

## NTSB Conclusions

- “the amount of information that could be provided by a cockpit video recorder is considerable.”
- “The Safety Board ...... believes that application of current technology of long duration video in the cockpits of air transport aircraft could prove to be a valuable addition to aircraft accident investigation.”
- NTSB/AAR-90/04   September 11, 1990

## The Benefits of Improved Vision

- DC-8 Accident Jeddah 1991
- Tyre burst into flame on take off roll
- Unaware of the fire, the undercarriage is retracted as normal
- 261 casualties, caused by the loss of the aircraft
- B-737 Incident Heathrow 1986
- Wheel well fire caused fire warning soon after take off
- Aircraft following up warned pilot that they could see flames.  Aircraft returned to land
- Despite Extensive Damage to Aircraft -No Casualties

**Notes:**
In a furher illustration of the use of cameras, take the air accident at Jeddah in 1991

READ THE ABOVE

Compared with an avoided accident at Heathrow, where a following pilot had a clear view of the fire, and was able to describe the extent of the problem, and the pilot landed with no casualties

## Video in Society

- Video Cameras now capture and record all the important events in our lives
- Marriages,     Even Births!
- City Centres
- Deterring Violence, by allowing perpetrators to be followed and apprehended
- Banks
- Checking on Credit Card and ATM fraud
- Police Cars
- Recording Vehicle Offences

## Video in the Workplace

- Stores to catch thieves
- Banks to protect employees
- Police Cars
- Preventing Assaults on the Police
- Protecting Citizens from the Police
- School Busses
- preventing violence between pupils
- preventing vandalism
- prevent litigation aimed at School Transportation Authorities

**Notes:**
Still fairly controversial
But gaining support as a true record of what actually happened

## Acceptable?

- Relationship between management and employees
- Trust
- Suspicion
- Should be protection for both
- Not to be used for persecution of either
- If there is no incident, then recording should be destroyed

## Recording the Airliner Cockpit

- Viewing the Pilot
- Who is in control?; Are they hindered, or impeded?
- Monitoring Controls
- Are they obscured?
- Checking Instruments
- Functionality
- Graphics; Not trying to read Text or Data

## B737 Cockpit

## Airline Pilots Position

- IFALPA Annex 6 Attachment B-3
- recommends the use of video for operational monitoring of the exterior of the aircraft, and cabin areas
- “There is an operational need for installation of a CCTV monitor in the flight decks of transport aircraft”
- IFALPA Annex 13 Attachment
- “IFALPA ..... encourage the use of Video Recorders for the purpose of recording only the information that is actually displayed on the pilots’ instrument panel”

**Notes:**
Note: - In view of the history of misuse of Flight Recorders, IFALPA believes that the intrusion of Cockpit Video Recorders into the working environment of pilots is offensive and is an invasion of privacy”

“IFALPA opposes the use of Cockpit Video Recorders which record the entire cockpit environment, but does encourage the use of Video Recorders for the purpose of recording only the information that is actually displayed on the pilots’ instrument panel”

Strong paper by Lindsay Fenwick of ALPA presented at the ISASI Conference in ottowa last year, makes it very clear that had the airline pilot’s experience of the Security of Cockpit Voice Recordings been better, then their attitude towards the introduction of video would be much easier.

## Video Recording Criteria

- Size of Memory Medium
- Uncompressed Data 200kB per picture
- Compressed Data 15kB per picture
- Compression Type
- JPEG Stand Alone Frames - Current State of the Art
- MPEG derives frames from sequence
- Fractal - High Power machines needed
- Wavelet  - possibility for the future

## The Future Accident Recorder

- As it is all simply digital data on a standard communications bus

## The Recorder as a Data “Sponge”

- Recording
- Data; Digitised Audio; Digitised Video
- All can be generated locally to the sensor
- Submitted to the ‘dumb’ recorder in a standard protocol and format
- Recorder merely records data
- Replay
- Special to Type tools to separate and reconstruct Data, Audio and Video Recordings

## “The Accident Network Server”

- Digital Transmission
- 10 to 100Mbits per second
- Ethernet compatible
- Twisted pair 		10/100 Base T
- Coaxial			10/100 Base 2
- Fibre Optic			10/100 Base FL
- Standard “Browser”
- Commercial Off the Shelf Technology
- Simple Commands
- Using TCP-IP, HTML pages

## A Multi-Modal Solution

- While most of the examples are taken from Aircraft, the technology is applicable across all transportation modes
- Currently being evaluated for use in UK trains
- Proposed for US School Busses
- Proposed to UK Airlines

## “State of the Art”

- “State of the Art”

- AD Aerospace FlightVu FV-0730
- Aircraft standard Video Server
- Spread Spectrum transmission from aircraft to terminal building
- Internal and External Cameras
- TransVu FV-0745
- Ground Vehicle Video Server
- Touch Screen Control Panel
- FV-0700 Crashproof Recorder (in development)

## Other Recorder Technology

- L3C, among others, are producing crash protected combination recorders
- 25 hours data at the current 34 required parameter list,
- and, projected 88 parameters, required in 2002
- 2 hours audio from 5 channels
- Terrington Systems in UK
- 15000 parameters
- all data collected
- all time stamped and recorded to DAT tape
- Full Simulation of an incident can be achieved

**Notes:**
Military and Trials capabilities far exceed current commercial recording parameters

## Summary

- The Future Accident Recorder Applicable to Air, Marine, Rail and Road
- Digital
- Independent of Vehicle Supplies
- High Integrity
- High Capacity, more than 24 hours
- Capable of Data, Audio and Video

## Questions