Primagraphics to supply RVP technology

FEBRUARY 20--Primagraphics (Charlottesville, VA; www.primagraphics.net), a command-and-control, video, and graphics specialist, has been awarded a contract by Sensis Corp. (www.senses.com) to supply its commercial-off-the-shelf RVP (radar video processor) technology. Primagraphics technology will support the development of airport surface-detection equipment (ASDE) designed to cut the growing number of runway incidents at busy commercial airports. In the USA, the number of runway incursions jumped from 186 in 1993 to 322 in 1999.

Sensis is the prime contractor for the United States Federal Aviation Administration's ASDE-X program. ASDE-X is an integrated airport surface-management system designed to provide seamless coverage and aircraft identification (tags) to air traffic controllers.

Engineers at Sensis Corporation's Air Traffic Systems division (DeWitt, NY) needed to find off-the-shelf video processing technology to support the development of a new video processor for the ASDE-3 radar, which is being integrated into the ASDE-X system architecture. Primagraphics provided software modules from its new RVP product family to support processing of ASDE-3 video. The modules perform clutter processing and plot extraction with the resulting data being fed into Sensis' Multi-sensor Fusion Processor.