Aero-TV: Avionics Tip of the Week - Evolution of Synthetic Vision

Garmin's Avionics Product Manager Bill Stone Explains the History of SVT

On November 5th through November 7th, 2009, AOPA held their annual AOPA Aviation Summit at the Tampa Convention Center located in Tampa, Florida. Over 7,500 aviation enthusiasts attended various forums, speeches, as well as hundreds of booths featuring the latest in G.A. technology.

One such session, an informative panel entitled "Flying the Future Now," focused on the latest avionics technology, both for pilots today and in the future. Led by AOPA's Editor-in-Chief, Tom Haines, the panel featured three prominent industry leaders: Garmin's Avionics Product Manager, Bill Stone, Rockwell Collins Senior Director of Control Technologies, David Vos, and Free Flight Systems C.E.O., Tim Taylor. Discussing such subjects as synthetic vision, enhanced vision, ADS-B, and advanced flight control systems, the panel participants provided attendees an in-depth look at GA's evolving cockpit.

Join Aero-TV as we profile significant segments from the panels discussion in the coming weeks. In part one of the series, Garmin's Bill Stone discusses the history of synthetic vision. A cornerstone of technological advancement in recent years, the "highway in the sky" is found in virtually every new aircraft on the market. Most pilots don't realize, however, that the technology has been in development for almost 60 years. Originally called "prospective vision," research began in the 1950s using stereography in preliminary concepts. Stone explains how synthetic vision grew from those beginning attempts.

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