The Boeing Company

Ken L Bernier

Michael C Cates

Cris Kevin Bosetti

W Brendan Blanton

Bernard P Paul, Jr

Jeremy D Childress

John J Biel-Goebel

Linda J Goyne

Jr Bernard P Paul

A Light Detecting and Ranging (LIDAR) based system detecting and quantifying ice accretions and shedding on an aircraft. This system can be used to detect ice, operate ice protection systems, and satisfy aircraft icing certification requirements. This system can also be used to determine the shape, thickness, type, and location of the ice accretions.

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) ice detection system

A method for rendering a real-time conformal view of terrestrial body's terrain being traversed by a mobile platform includes storing digital terrain elevation data (DTED) tiles for at least a portion of the terrain of a terrestrial body into an external removable mass data storage device (ERMDSD). The ERMDSD is connectable to an onboard computer system (OCS) comprising embedded mobile platform components that include at least one processing card, at least random access memory (RAM) device and at least one graphics card. The method additionally includes executing a real-time rendering assist application (RTRAA) stored in the processing card to dynamically repackage the DTED tiles into DTED chunks being representative of an area of the terrestrial body to be traversed (ATBT) by the mobile platform. The method further includes executing the RTRAA to create a base mesh of root diamonds representative of the ATBT and tessellate the root diamonds to create a plurality of leaf diamonds. Further yet the method includes utilizing the graphics card only to render the leaf diamonds, thereby generating a realtime conformal view of the ATBT.

Real-time conformal terrain rendering

Growing community of inventors

O'Fallon, MO, United States of America

Ken L Bernier