According to Mymes Consulting, Boeing is expected to be the first leader in the industry to use a green laser pointer radar. The latest version of its new test model is studying the use of LiDAR to detect clear-air turbulence, a capability Boeing claims has never been achieved on commercial aircraft. In 2012, Boeing launched its first project using a new generation of 737-800 aircraft provided by American Airlines. The project redesigned the configuration of Boeing commercial aircraft and used it as an evaluation test platform for new technologies.
The project has evaluated more than 55 different technologies on American Airlines 737, Boeing 787, NASA 758 and Embraer E170 aircraft. The main cases include variable-speed fan nozzles, regenerative fuel cells, and algorithms developed to facilitate crew-based time interval management. In 2018, Boeing used the fuselage of the Federal 777 Freighter to evaluate various technologies, including a synthetic instrument landing system that uses satellite information in the form of GPS signals to design access to the runway.
Boeing recently released a video depicting the idea of using lidar in the project in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Research and Development Agency. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lidar is a remote sensing method that uses pulsed lasers to measure variable distances. The green laser pointer radar is combined with data recorded by an independently developed airborne system to generate three-dimensional information on the shape and surface characteristics of the earth.