Abstract: An electrical system for controlling the supply of power to several items of electrical equipment via a power bus, an interface bus and respective connector assemblies. Each connector assembly has a connector containing a power switch connected to a monitor and an interface unit, which controls operation of the switch. The interface unit also receives configuration data about the power requirements of the respective item of equipment from a configurations code device in a mating connector on the equipment. The interface unit supplies signals to a control unit via the interface bus and receives signals from the control unit to control switching of the power switch.

Abstract: A display or other radiation-emitting device has an array of vertical ballistic transistors which produce electrons that flow into overlying phosphor regions. Light produced by the phosphors is focussed by an array of convex lenses above the phosphor regions to provide a high intensity display with limited viewing angle.

Abstract: A solid-state display comprises a glass plate on which is deposited an upper layer of parallel conductive tracks interrupted by recesses containing regions of conductive or semiconductive phosphor. An array of ballistic transistors within a semiconductor layer is in alignment on one side with the phosphor regions and on the other side with lower conductive tracks which extend at right angles to the tracks in the upper layer. When a voltage is applied to one of the tracks in the upper layer which is positive with respect to the voltage applied to one of the lower tracks it causes one of the transistors to emit electrons upwardly into the adjacent phosphor region. This causes fluorescence of the region and the emission of light through the glass plate.

Abstract: The operation of an engine or other assembly is monitored by detecting the sound it makes and deriving from this, in conjunction with its speed, temperature and control settings, a multi-dimension condition vector. The vector changes during operation of the engine and is supplied to a processor which continuously builds a model of the engine at different stages of operation such as by a sequence-learning neural net or by hidden markov model when an atypical condition vector is received, the processor generates an alert signal to a display.

Abstract: An aircraft navigation system has a digital map store of terrain features or man-made features in the region over which the aircraft is flying. Infra-red television cameras view the surrounding of the aircraft. Their outputs are supplied to processors in which the camera outputs are compared with a library of features transformed according to the camera viewing angle. Information about those features identified is supplied to a correlator which correlates the features against the map store to identify their location in the map and estimates the aircraft position as an output to a navigation computer. The system also indicates aircraft attitude which may be independent of known-features, from observation of the horizon. Position information can also be provided by dead reckoning from a known initial position by monitoring the change in positional relationship of a feature from the initial position to that at a later position.

Abstract: An image processing system has sixteen processing assemblies provided by transputers which each have a memory and a processor. An infra-red television camera supplies signals representing different areas of the field of view to respective different ones of the processing assemblies. The assemblies also receive external signals from other sources and are interconnected with one another by a line which enables synchronization between the assemblies. Each processor processes only that information in its memory and provides output signals representative of the respective area of the field of view.

Abstract: Apparatus for processing the image seen by a television camera viewing the surroundings of an aircraft has a store of topographical mapping information and object data stores which contain information about the appearance, location and size of objects in the area to be viewed. The apparatus derives information as to the location of an object in the field of view and determines where the line of sight of the object from the camera intercepts the stored topographical mapping. The range of the object is determined trigonometrically from its location relative to a corresponding part of the stored topographical mapping and the position of the aircraft. New objects are indicated when they are not present in the object data stores. The angle subtended by an identified object is compared with the known size of the object to provide another indication of range. An indication of the size of the object can be provided from knowledge of its range and the angle subtended.