Patent ID: 7864096

Claim:
A collision avoidance system for a host aircraft, comprising: a plurality of sensors for providing data about other aircraft that may be employed to determine one or more parameters to calculate future positions of the other aircraft; a processor to determine whether any combinations of the calculated future positions of the other aircraft are correlated or uncorrelated; and a collision avoidance module that uses the correlated or uncorrelated calculated future positions to provide a signal instructing the performance of a collision avoidance maneuver when a collision threat exists between the host aircraft and at least one of the other aircraft; wherein the plurality of sensors includes a TCAS and an optical sensor and wherein the collision avoidance maneuver is a TCAS resolution advisory when (a) one or more future positions calculated by a processor for the TCAS predicts a collision and (b) no other future positions have been determined based on data from the optical sensor.