Honeywell has launched its Precision Boresight Alignment System (PBAS), designed to improve positioning and location accuracy in a wide range of applications within the aerospace industry and beyond.
Honeywell’s PBAS is used to help ensure two things are properly aligned. For example, an aircraft could be flying level, but its instruments might say it has a slight roll because the navigation system is not properly prealigned, or boresighted, to the aircraft reference point. Honeywell’s system finds discrepancies between two objects, in this case the aircraft and its navigation system, and provides readings on what those differences are so maintenance technicians can make adjustments to ensure precision accuracy.
The system consists of two small electric boxes. One attaches to the item needing alignment, such as the navigation system, and the other attaches to whatever it should be aligned to, in this case the aircraft. Inside each of the boxes are three gyroscopes that work similarly to other inertial navigators to determine positioning data. The boxes are connected to a central computer that displays the information from which the technician sees discrepancies.
“Current systems that help ensure this level of accuracy are bulky and complex to use. Technical personnel need extensive training in the use of complex optical equipment, resulting in high costs to provide precision boresight alignments,” said Matt Picchetti, vice president and general manager, Navigation & Sensors, Honeywell Aerospace. “This new system is unique because unlike those in the past, we’re using only inertial sensors to gather this data, as opposed to optical techniques that require line of sight between the reference and target device. Furthermore, we believe a system like this may have broad applications outside the aerospace industry.”
Although it was originally intended for civilian and military aircraft, the system can benefit other industrial applications such as oil and gas, factory production, and construction. Essentially, it’s useful in situations where alignment of large parts is critically important.
Honeywell is a trusted leader with decades of experience engineering and manufacturing high-performance navigation and sensor products for commercial, defense, industrial and space applications. These products, which include inertial navigation sensors, accelerometers and ring laser gyros, among others, are trusted by millions every day and are designed to withstand the harshest operating environments in the air, on the ground or at sea.
