SIMONA visibility detection
Airport operations are highly dependent on visibility conditions. In case of low visibility, only aircraft with special equipment are allowed to take off and land, and the frequency of movements may also have to be reduced.
Visibility is measured by sensors at the airport, which transmit data to the aeronautical meteorology service. However, small-scale fog patches or disruptive factors such as insect swarms may distort this data.
Austro Control Digital Services has therefore developed SIMONA.
SIMONA provides a sensor-independent visibility assessment from 360° panoramic images, which is used to check the plausibility of the sensor measurements. By evaluating the large image section, SIMONA is very robust and therefore a valuable data source for the aeronautical meteorology service.
- Visibility sensors often have representation issues
- SIMONA translates panorama images into a visibility
- SIMONA provides a robust, sensor-independent visibility assessment to validate sensor measurements
- One of the first machine learning systems in Europe that is fully compliant with the EASA guidelines for a trustworthy AI
- SIMONA can detect representativity issues of visibility sensors
- SIMONA works in a variety of weather conditions and times of day, e.g. in rain, snow or at night
- SIMONA is robust against camera shifts, lens dirt, raindrops on the lens or swarms of insects
