Helmet Tracking
CCL’s optical correlator technology is currently under assessment with a well-known leader in the field to provide pilots with a unique passive helmet/view tracking system. Current accelerometer and gyroscope-based systems suffer from drift and calibration problems, whilst other methods involve placing unwanted emissive devices at fixed positions around the cockpit.

By using high speed images feeds from one or multiple cameras mounted on the helmet of the pilot, the shift invariance property of the CCL correlator can be used to provide a measure of how much the view of the pilot changes between frames. This data is crucial if the Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) system is to provide the pilot with the information he requires – in an environment where split second decisions can be the difference between life and death.

With the cameras set to look at the internal features of the cockpit, the system requires no other information and is totally independent of other aircraft systems. The current and previous frames from each feed are compared to provide the relative shift information, as shown below: