Even without taking into account expected increases in airport capacity, ground handling crews responsible for aircraft turnaround are already operating under time constraints and in highly congested areas, often in difficult weather conditions. The outcome is damage on an extraordinary scale, to the hugely expensive aircraft they are servicing. The direct cost of ground accidents involving Ground Support Equipment (GSE) and their aircraft amounts globally to €1billion annually and a staggering €5billion in indirect costs. As more aircraft manufactured from composite materials come into service, these costs are likely to rise even higher. More worryingly, safety will be compromised as damage to composites can easily go unnoticed.Existing state-of-the-art technologies cannot address this growing problem. The Ramp-Aware project will develop a novel system for sensing the location of GSE in relation to aircraft, thereby greatly reducing the number of costly collisions between GSE and aircraft. This system will provide a robust solution for its environment, by achieving the following objectives: specialist short range radar capable of 50mm ranging accuracy at 30m from aircraft with a vehicle orientation detection accuracy of 0.1° in all weather conditions and a GSE positional tracking system with overall accuracy of 50mm.Using this solution the project expects to comprehensively address the problem of accidents involving GSE & aircraft on the ramp. In doing so, we will deliver €42.02 million revenue with a profit of €10.95 million to the SME partners after 5 years. This will lead to the creation of over 200 highly skill jobs, greatly reduce the enormous direct and indirect costs of damage for ground handling providers and airlines, alleviate travel disruptions to passengers, make the job of the ground handler more manageable and safer, reduce the emerging threat of unnoticed damage to composite aircraft which will maintain and improve air safety standards.