The ONBASS Project

ONBASS is a Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP), partly funded by the European Commission under the Aeronautic and Space thematic priority of the 6th Framework Programme. The project aims at significantly improving flight safety by introducing the Principle of Active System Safety (PASS) for General Aviation in Europe. ONBASS started in January 2005 and is due for completion at the end of December 2007.
The final goal of the project is to design, develop, test and validate an on-board active real-time data processing system that will monitor flight related parameters and react in the case of a proliferation of risk to the aircraft or its occupants. The system will recognise undesirable trends or patterns in data relating to the various aircraft agents (aircraft, systems, pilot) by analysing and comparing current flight data against previously accumulated aircraft-specific behavioural data. As a result, timely interventions could be made in order to eliminate the associated risk(s) or to minimise the severity of the corresponding effects. In addition, the system will offer invaluable and comprehensive data for post-flight analysis upon which aviation safety bodies could base and/or redesign safety policies and procedures.

To reach this goal, research into basic fault tolerant hardware elements for the on-board part of the active safety system must be done to get the basis for developing a prototype. To take full advantage of the fault tolerant hardware, system software fundamentals for safety critical applications, including in-flight management of hardware faults without affecting the application state, are required.

Partners: The ONBASS Consortium