Landmark invention in aerospace grants UK patent to University of Malta

The invention is the work of Dr Ing. David Zammit-Mangion, Ing. Andrew Sammut and Ing. Brian Zammit of the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at the University and is the culmination of several years of research and development with the aerospace industry.

Partly funded by the European Commission, the department has been working with several industrial partners in the domain of designing airborne avionic equipment to ensure that aircraft do not collide during flight.

The University of Malta was tasked with the design of an airborne instrument that protects against the risk of aircraft collision on the runway during take-off or landing.  The effective mitigation of runway collisions has, for many years now, been high on the ‘wish list’ of the aviation industry, particularly in the United States.

The system designed by the University of Malta electronically monitors aircraft in the vicinity of a runway. When a risk of collision is detected, it defines the path the aircraft should take to ensure that a collision is averted, and alerts the pilots accordingly to take appropriate action.

“This is a very challenging task, for we are here designing safety critical applications in which we have the lives of all those on board at stake,” David Zammit-Mangion, head of the department of electronic systems engineering. “Besides the difficulty in ensuring safety in any recommended manoeuvre, the issue of how to alert the crew in the cockpit is hotly debated in both the US and Europe.  Through extensive simulator testing using professional pilots for evaluation and feedback, we have demonstrated that our strategy and technique are superior to alternative approaches.”

Under the FLYSAFE project, the inventors have been working closely with major industrial partners, including Thales Avionics, BAE Systems and the Dutch Aerospace Research agency NLR.  Besides the development of the techniques and algorithms, a number of prototypes were also built to allow integration and evaluation on large flight simulators in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.  Professional pilots were employed to assess the system and provide feedback on the effectiveness of the technique, with several of these coming from Air Malta, who was also a contract partner in the research programme. 

Zammit-Mangion said the department gives a very high priority to the protection of the intellectual property developed. “Patents are a show-case of know-how and capability. This UK patent is the first international patent granted to the University of Malta and we are proud to be the ones pushing the boundaries of achievement for our institution. We have a policy within our Department to patent our inventions and indeed other patent applications are already in the pipeline.”