Airborne Oil Spill Detection
OPTIMARE was selected for a contract to provide the latest version of its Maritime Surveillance System MEDUSA for the German Navy. The mission equipment will be installed into a brand new Dornier 228NG which will substitute one of the German maritime surveillance aircraft of type Dornier 228.
The ordered MEDUSA suite includes OPTIMARE's oil spill sensors of type SLAR, IR/UV Line Scanner and VIS Line Scanner. Moreover, the MEDUSA system fully integrates the EO/IR, the AIS and the SATCOM system which will also be part of the mission aircraft.
OPTIMARE is specialising in mission system and sensor technology for airborne maritime surveillance and related special missions. Marine observing systems (in-water systems), autonomous observing systems, and analytics (in-situ) are additional business segments. The company supplies its own remote sensors for oil spill monitoring as well as other mission-relevant components and integrates them into the well-known maritime surveillance system MEDUSA. In case of a MEDUSA System in oil spill monitoring configuration the MEDUSA Software Suite provides unique capabilities such as automated robust extraction of oil spill signatures from sensor images as well as data fusion capabilities.
OPTIMARE has been in business since 1991. Mission equipment from OPTIMARE has been used on numerous types of airborne platforms worldwide, e.g., Dornier 228, Basler BT-67, Bo-105, CASA CN-235, CASA C-295, and others. Recently, OPTIMARE and the US-based company Aerial Surveillance Systems Inc. announced the official launch of an airborne oil spill monitoring platform based on MEDUSA and the Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350-based airborne surveillance platform SkyEye 350. Since its inception OPTIMARE has been involved in a total of more than 40 aircraft installations and campaigns including projects for Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand and others.
