Statement of Markus Römmen, VIDAIR Avionics AG

MR. ROMMEN: Ladies and gentlemen, Chairman. Thank you very much for this very nice introduction. But I think I'm the speaker with the most problems today because I'm the last one. The first problem. The second one is that you've seen all these impressive presentations the last three days. And the third problem is English is not my main language or my mother language but I try to do my very best.

I want to talk about future requirements and future technologies in the recording situation for the several markets. That means voice, data and image. But I think it should not be a future technology, not a far future technology. It should be a very near future technology because the last accidents and incidents like the Swiss Air 111 or the TWA 800 or the big train crash in Germany, gives us the right to give some more pressure to the developments and also to the approvals and to the standards.

We have no time to wait additional two or three years to establish technologies like video recording or like digital data recording in the aerospace or aviation industry.

The main work of our company, of VIDAIR, is to develop the high technology systems for different markets, like for the aviation industry, for defense solutions, also for the industrial security market, and also for automotive markets. And automotive solutions means trains, trucks, cars and other special cars.

The idea of the digital flight view recorder was born in 1995 with a stupid and simple question; why there are no cameras on board the aircraft. And we have looked to all the different technologies which are available on the market, which means standard CCD cameras, means standard compression technologies like mentioned this morning from Mike, or like JPEG and MPEG.

But if you ever look into the cockpit, as an example, of an aircraft, you have extremely different and fast changing light situations, as well, if you try to record very high resolution pictures, you need a lot of memory or you need a very high compression. And MPEG and JPEG are technologies developed for the PC market or for standard applications and not for high security applications.

We have in our first perusal of the market what we have today. We have the cockpit voice recorder and we have the flight data recorder. And what are the problems? The problems are differences between information from the pilot and the voice recorder, as well from the data recorder. And there are also problems that there are differences between the information recorded for the data recorder and the information shown on the displays and instruments for the pilot.

There are several examples for that. The right engine was burning but in reality, the left engine was burning and the pilot stopped the right engine.

And what are the needs for the future? We say, we need new developments for flight recorders to provide pilots and investigators with more information than available today. As well, one recorder for all the three technologies and two recorders in the aircraft; one in the back and one at the tail of the aircraft. And we need better newer technologies than available today, and also we need new solutions.

This is only a small description of the existing cockpit voice recorder. I have stolen this from the NTSB home page.

The next one is a short description about the standard voice and data recorders. But what are the future developments?

We named this product Digital Flight View Recorder and we are the founder or inventor of this new technologies and we have a lot of worldwide patents for this type of technology.

Here you see a small drawing about the total system concept, and here a little bit more in detail. This is a complete solution. We are of the opinion that the Digital Flight View Recorder is only a small isolated solution to increase safety and security for the aviation industry, for the aircraft. But here you see a global concept we have developed together with different aircraft manufacturers.

I say, okay, we have a new high tech bus network inside the aircraft. And on the left side you see the Digital Flight View Recorder with two boxes and different types of cameras, as well as communication units. You can connect cameras, displays for the information of the pilot. Also, medical systems or recording units also for information from the cabin, from the cargo section, also from the outside area.

For the pilot, it's a big help to have also information during the flight from the outside area. As example, after turbulences, or also information from the cabin. What is the situation of the service or what happens with striking passengers? We have more and more of the problem in the aircraft that there are a lot of drunken passengers.

This small picture means not that the Digital Flight View Recorder or video recording will solve all the problems or will give us all the information or reasons for an incident or for an accident but together with the existing technologies like voice and data recorder, it should be the possibility to find nearly 100 percent the reason for the accident.

Here's the concept of the Digital Flight View Recorder. It means we have three cameras in the cockpit looking to the pilot side, to the co-pilot side and to the upper panel side. As well two cameras from the outside area. You will see a small sample from a camera on the wingtip.

And then this information is recorded on standard recorders like from L3 Communications, like from Smith Industries, Allied Signal or from other companies. And there's a software package that you can read out this information from the recorder, as well as the possibility of imaging processing to zoom details of the recorded pictures, like what is the position of the safety belt switch or what was the information shown on the display.

We say, okay, we need high resolution and now low resolution. But if you have a global view like this here, and if you try to zoom a small detail like a very small switch you have a problem with low resolution cameras. The cameras are used in the standard industry have also another problem. Different light situations. And if the light in the cockpit is changing very quickly, that's a problem that the camera can't see anything for a few seconds.

Another thing is that the camera should also run in emergency situations, like loss of pressure in the cockpit, like loss of temperature in the cabin. And with the standard camera technology, you need special heating systems and for different light situations also special lenses.

The CMOS camera technology we have developed is coming from the space industry and we have increased capability of this chip to resolution of 2,000 times 2,000 pixels. And then we try to compress these pictures or we have to look to existing profession procedures, like MPEG and JPEG. And if you need high compression, you have a big loss in the quality of the picture with MPEG and JPEG. And that was the reason for our own development, called AVICC, Advanced Video Compression Concept. And we compress pictures/images at the moment with a compression rate of 500 to 1. And the new generation, AVICC-2, will compress pictures with a rate of a thousand times MPEG-2. And MPEG-2 is the standard in the TV transmission technology.

And this gives us also the possibility to transmit pictures online during the flight to the ground station. As example, pictures from the cabin, in the case of hijacking. That's special forces like GSG-9 in Germany or whatever, has the possibility to look into the cabin to see, okay, how much hijackers on board. What is the position of the hijackers. What is the type of weapons. They can start comparisons with existing databases and a lot of more features.

There are the data memories. It's full digital, encoded. We use a very high code or scrambling mode for these data because if the blackbox is found by a TV company or whatever and they read out the information, it's not so interesting that the family of the pilot would see the last pictures on CNN or CBS or whatever.

These data are scrambled with a 2,048 bit structure. It's very high and it's very difficult to encode this information. And there are special features for the investigators to read out this information. Then these data are compressed with our compression system, called AVICC, and it's real time. It's 25 pictures per second, not 10 or not 5 or not 2 pictures per second because there can be changes very quick in a short time so that in my opinion there's a need for real time recording.

Also very high resolution. And after that, you see all the standard things like impact tolerance, like heat tolerance, like water resistance and so on.

Then there's a small interface for the standard animation software packages. Also available in the future that we can integrate the movie or the data readout from the black box into standard software packages so that we have voice, animation and the live image from the last minutes.

This is only a sample of the recording of the information. Here you see the black part of these pictures is the memory chips and in our concept we store the first picture on the first chip, the next picture on the second chip and so on. So after fire, they've destroyed half of the memory board. We have not 25 pictures per second. In this case we have 10 pictures or 15 pictures per second.

There's also additional memory board in the concept with additional 10 minutes. That after the main power supply of the aircraft has stopped, that a separate power supply for additional 10 minutes starts on a separate board. So like in the Swiss Air 111 crash that you have, with our technology 10 minutes more information than in the past.

Also in the future, two boxes; one in the front, one in the back, with identical information.

And what are the benefits of our technology? There's a patent for new CMOS camera technology for the cockpit installation, high resolution, very small cameras and small means the size of the camera. And at the moment, it's 2.4 times 2.4 centimeters. And the weight of the camera is 23 grams, and has operation temperature from minus 50 up to plus 90 degrees without any heating or cooling systems.

Very high resolution, high compression, then integration of new digital memory technologies. A very high secured communication link from the aircraft to the ground station and some more things like small housings and small weights and whatever.

These are some small sample pictures but not with detail. But on the right-hand side there is a small detail zoom so that you can read what is written on the multifunctional displays.

But there are also further applications for these technologies, not only for the aviation industry. There's also a need in the train or railroad industry. What we have defined train security image recorder. It's working after the same concept like in the aircraft with cameras inside the cockpit of the high speed train. Also information from the outside area, like temperature, like whether there's something on the rails, whatever. As well, recording this information on a crash proof recorder. And then read out this information after a crash -- what happens.

There's another product called digital image data recorder. That means solution for the truck industry. Also in the case for insurance. We have a live picture from the driver and also from the outside area, outside situation, weather situation, information like whether they're in traffic jam or snow on the street, whatever.

And then this information is combined with digital data from the computer like speed or oil pressure and something else, recorded on a crash box.

These are our two addresses. We have developed also some more products like cabin video monitoring systems like I mentioned before for the hijacking situation, as well cargo fire detection systems for the new A340-500 and 600 generation, as well as the A3XX. And also, a medical emergency system with the name NEMSYS where we can transmit live images, including electrocardiogram data, blood pressure and so on online to a medical health center, as well the ill person or the flight attendants have the possibility to see the doctor on the ground station.

Thank you very much for your time. That's it.