Patent ID: 6909381

Claim:
A system for avoiding collisions and recording near miss events and also providing improved vision of the ground for passengers comprising: (a) one or more optical lenses feeding one or more video cameras, said lens or lenses located so as to “see” at least a substantial part of the space surrounding the aircraft permitting the viewing of other aircraft and other objects close enough to the protected aircraft to represent a potential hazard, (b) a monitoring system connected to the video signals generated by the (a) video camera(s), said monitor system arranged so as to cause potentially hazardous objects to appear at a location where the pilot would expect the object would collide with the protected aircraft, (c) circuitry also driven by the signal derived from the (a) cameras for sensing the presence of dangerous objects that are perceived to present a hazardous situation, and (d) audio circuitry driven by the (c) sensing circuitry for producing an alarm sound whenever an object is close enough to the protected aircraft to require evasive actions is sensed, said alarm sound projected by a surround sound system so as to cause the sound to be perceived by the aircraft's pilot to be at a location where the dangerous object can be seen by the pilot on the monitor system, (e) a video recorder connected to the (a) optical/video system and controlled by the (c) sensing circuitry so as to record the signals fed to the two monitors, and (f) passenger monitoring equipment fed by at least some of the video signals generated by the (a) video cameras, said passenger monitoring equipment arranged so as to permit the viewing of landmarks from individual passenger seats.