Advanced system for foreign object debris, drone and bird-aircraft strike avoidance
The aviation sector is increasingly facing various safety threats to passengers, crews and aircraft caused by foreign object debris (FOD) as well as birds and the growing number of drones on runways and surrounding airport areas. Given the high impact of potential accidents and incidents – damage to aircraft and potential loss of lives – there is a continuous adoption of best practices and technologies to mitigate these risks. Today, all airports rely on periodic vehicle patrols for runway inspections, but such procedures have several limitations. Alternative technological approaches are expensive and only detect FOD. Thus, today’s approaches have not been effective, and the aviation sector experiences costs that are estimated in $13Bn/year due to FOD and bird-aircraft strikes.

MS3E aims to seize a major market opportunity, offering an innovative solution – FODBASA - that has been specifically developed to overcome limitations of existing solutions and to meet the demand for safer solutions for the aviation sector. FODBASA is an autonomous radar-camera-based system designed for simultaneous detection of FOD, birds and drones.  Our system provides cost-effective, accurate real-time FOD, birds and drone detection on runways and within a 10-km radius of the airport. 

FODBASA project goal is to complete the development cycle of the FODBASA, performed during the EUROSTARS project and implement the necessary activities to overcome the remaining barriers related to market entry through refinement, scale-up and demonstration activities at Billund (DK) and London Stansted (UK) airports. 
 
FODBASA is a cost-efficient solution, triggering an attractive business case for any airport with more than 10k movements/year. FODBASA is expected to generate €78.5 million in revenue and €33.8 million in gross profit, in 5-years post-project.