Mokhtar Sadok

Video-based cargo fire verification system with fuzzy inference engine for commercial aircraft

Conventional smoke detection systems currently installed onboard aircraft are often subject to high rates of false alarms. Under current procedures, whenever an alarm is issued the pilot is obliged to release fire extinguishers and to divert to the nearest airport. Aircraft diversions are costly and dangerous in some situations. A reliable detection system that minimizes false-alarm rate and allows continuous monitoring of cargo compartments is highly desirable. A video-based system has been recently developed by Goodrich Corporation to address this problem. The Cargo Fire Verification System (CFVS) is a multi camera system designed to provide live stream video to the cockpit crew and to perform hotspot, fire, and smoke detection in aircraft cargo bays. In addition to video frames, the CFVS uses other sensor readings to discriminate between genuine events such as fire or smoke and nuisance alarms such as fog or dust. A Mamdani-type fuzzy inference engine is developed to provide approximate reasoning for decision making. In one implementation, Gaussian membership functions for frame intensity-based features, relative humidity, and temperature are constructed using experimental data to form the system inference engine. The CFVS performed better than conventional aircraft smoke detectors in all standardized tests.