AeroFOD is NorthSky's foreign-object detection device for runways. Cameras, sensors, and edge processing installed alongside the runway — picking up debris down to 1–2 cm in operational conditions, in real time, with exact coordinates. Designed to replace the close-and-sweep penalty with a thirty-second targeted pickup. Production-tested. Deploy in weeks.
A nut, a bolt, a piece of tyre rubber, a fastener fragment, an animal carcass, a fuel cap — any of them, on the runway, at touchdown or take-off speed, costs more than the airport will ever recover from the operator. The industry estimates the annual damage at around US $12 billion, paid mostly by airlines in engine, belly, and tyre repair, plus the cascading delay cost. AeroFOD is the device built to take this off the table.
AeroFOD is a dedicated device, not a feature riding on existing CCTV. The optics, the sensor stack, and the edge compute are built for runway-side conditions and runway-grade detection thresholds.
Multi-spectral camera array tuned for runway surface conditions — sealed for rain, dust, monsoon, and the temperature swings of an airside summer day. Lens stack engineered for detection at distances that matter on the runway.
Complementary sensors — radar where appropriate, thermal where dawn and dusk hurt the camera. The fused signal lifts detection past what any one modality could do alone, particularly for the 1–2 cm objects that the eye gives up on.
Edge box mounted with the device. Detection happens locally, in milliseconds, so a tower outage doesn't blind the runway. Resilient. Low-bandwidth. Easy to swap. Connectivity to the safety dashboard is one-way out — the device is sealed against inbound traffic.
Detection thresholds tuned per airport during commissioning. Configurable per-zone sensitivity to balance false-positive rate against the cost of missed events.
An object appears on the runway surface. AeroFOD picks it up, fuses the signal across the modalities, and confirms classification. Local inference. Sub-second.
The exact location is computed from the device's calibrated view of the runway. Output: latitude, longitude, runway designator, distance from threshold.
Alert pushed to the runway-safety dashboard, the ramp supervisor's radio, and the tower view. Evidence clip attached. SLA timer starts.
A safety vehicle drives to the coordinates, retrieves, photographs, clears. Runway reports cleared. Tower releases. The schedule keeps moving.
FOD costs airlines billions a year. Each strike is paid for in engine, belly, and tyre repair, plus the propagated delay and the reputational drag.
FOD costs airports operating time, slot revenue, and regulatory exposure. Each close-and-sweep is movements you can't run and slots you can't sell.
AeroFOD is sold to airports, but the case for it is co-funded by airline pain. Many engagements involve airline operators sponsoring the deployment at airports they depend on.
Coverage is engineered per-runway during the site survey. Typical deployments use devices at both ends of each runway plus mid-runway positions where geometry requires. The objective is full-length detection with overlap at the boundaries.
Tuned per airport during commissioning. Per-zone sensitivity allows you to trade false-positive rate against the cost of missed events — typically calibrated against a thirty-day shadow run before live cutover.
Yes. The multi-spectral sensor stack is built for 24/7 operation including monsoon, dust storms, and low-light. Performance is characterised per condition during commissioning so the safety team knows what to expect.
Wherever your safety team already works — the runway-safety dashboard, the ramp supervisor's radio, the tower view, and any incident-management system you run. AeroFOD integrates outbound; it doesn't ask you to learn a new system.
Not on day one. The recommended posture is to retain reduced-cadence scheduled sweeps while operating AeroFOD; over time, with proven detection record, sweeps can move from scheduled to reactive-only. The path depends on your regulator and your safety culture.
Standalone. AeroFOD doesn't require ATOMS. If you also deploy ATOMS, FOD events feed the shared operational record and the runway-safety team's view is integrated with the wider turnaround picture. Either way works.
The device, the calibration process, and the integration template are production-tested. A typical first runway is scoped in days, surveyed in a week, commissioned in weeks. Twelve billion dollars of industry pain is a long way to walk; the first runway is a short way to start.
A 30-minute walkthrough on your runway layout, your current sweep cadence, your top three safety events. We'll send a site-survey proposal within a week.