Automatic Activation Device (AAD)

Nowadays, adventurous and fiery sports have made a sweet spot in people’s heart. The popularity of such sports including skydiving is increasing day by day and everyone seems interested to try out these challenging sports. Thousands of divers across the globe participate in official tournaments and carry out skydiving for recreational practices.

However, there is always a room for error while skydiving where the divers might lose consciousness while falling or lose track of the altitude or the equipment gets damaged. For the prevention of all these accidents, parachutes are aided with an AAD (Automatic Activation Device). AAD is a specific microprocessor computer placed in the skydiving container and is responsible for shooting out the back up parachute whenever required. The tool provides additional accuracy to the sport too. 

The AADs are one of the primary safety equipment used today in adventure sports. These small devices have an electric charge along with a cutting blade. The working principle lies through air pressure, which describes the speed of descent at any time. This assists in the automatic opening of the parachute when the diver is unable to open it manually. The AAD device enables recognizing altitude and fires up the parachute when the divers are freefalling from a certain unsafe altitude. The device projects out a cutter to cut the closing loop, which keeps the parachute in one place. Once this loop is cut, the reserve parachute deploys.

Some of the most common AADS are the CYPRES, M2 Multi and Vigil Cuatro.

The New Improved AADs

The modern AAD designs have already out-ruled the previous mechanical models. The new devices are based on electronic-pyrotechnic models. These are more reliable because of the in-built computers that can estimate the altitude and vertical speed more precisely. These electronic AADs also provide a tiny amount of pyrotechnic charge to cut the closing loop and shoot the parachute for the divers.

The modern AADs monitor the speed of pressure changes and record it via the sensors that send the information to the microprocessor. The microprocessor calculates the rate of descent and takes the call about activating the reserve if the freefall speed and altitude exceeds the limit. Also, the new age devices have batteries to power the processor so that it can activate the cutter.