Airframe and engine design hasn’t modified much prior to now many years and, aside from the opportunities provided by electric propulsion, likely won’t progress dramatically within the near future. The design of avionics and the way in which pilots control the increasingly electronic aircraft they fly, nevertheless, are on a rapid pace of advancement. The longer term of avionics shouldn’t be just coming: it’s already here and profoundly affecting the way in which we fly.
Probably the most interesting developments is the declining cost of advanced flight control systems—autopilots—and the way some are nearly morphing into fly-by-wire controls. This ultimately will make flying easier and can enable more people to turn out to be protected pilots without the big training burden that today’s pilots must endure. The technical term for that is simplified vehicle operations (SVO), and it has applications in all segments of aviation, especially upcoming advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft.
Honeywell
Andrew Barker, Honeywell Aerospace v-p of integrated avionics, is spending lots of time serious about these issues as he oversees development of the corporate’s next avionics platform, Anthem. “There’s a lot intelligence that we could capitalize on,” he said, but typically avionics design continues to include traditional ways of pilot interaction. “[As] the physical controls get less, because the autonomy and intelligence within the avionics proves itself, then pilots turn out to be more comfortable counting on the avionics. In order that intersection [the pilot interface], it changes pretty significantly; you create smarter and more capable avionics systems.”
A straightforward example is the baro setting, which is manual and done by pilots. The one recent automation of this function has been to synchronize the setting across all altimeters within the instrument panel so pilots don’t should remember to regulate the baro setting on each primary flight display and every backup display.
“Realistically,” he asked, “if my avionics are smart enough, do I want a physical baro control? I can get a baro reading over the radio. My avionics can go, ‘Oh, you simply got a baro update, do you must accept it?’ Yes [or] no. Okay. Done.”
The Anthem platform is exploring concepts similar to this, in addition to voice control and mixtures of touchscreens and physical controls. Because it has done with its Epic avionics platform but to an excellent greater degree, aircraft manufacturers will have the option to tailor Anthem interfaces to their specific needs. Anthem is designed for small to large aircraft in every segment. Up to now, it has been chosen by AAM developers Vertical Aerospace, Lilium, and Supernal, and more OEM announcements are expected soon.
One huge advantage of all of the work being done on AAM flight controls is that fly-by-wire systems are being adapted to smaller vehicles, which can lead to classy controls moving downmarket into light aircraft. “That is the target of what we did with our compact fly-by-wire,” Barker explained. “Let’s open up that envelope and convey the protection and the flexibility of that fly-by-wire system into general aviation. Our compact fly-by-wire is a large step in that direction.”
Barker sees avionics evolving in order that fly-by-wire flight controls turn out to be “the backbone of the airplane and avionics. You then get into that reduced crew and single-pilot and that simplified vehicle operations continuum.”
What that continuum looks like could eventually be a lone pilot supported by a team on the bottom, connected via secure links to the airplane. One among Anthem’s many features is cloud connectivity, and that may facilitate this sort of operation. The bottom operator might only need touchscreens and a keyboard and no physical controls. “Perhaps every little thing is a touch [control] once we go to totally on the bottom,” he said.
Further to those developments, Honeywell is leading research into the appliance of artificial intelligence (AI) to support single-pilot operations under a European Union SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking project. The goal is to “develop AI-powered digital assistants and a human-AI collaboration framework to support each prolonged minimum crew operations and single-pilot operations, ensuring the identical (or higher) level of safety and same (or lower) workload as operations with a full crew today,” based on Honeywell.
The Digital Assistants for Reducing Workload and Increasing collaboration (Darwin) project includes partners Pipistrel, Germany’s DLR research institute, Eurocontrol, EASA, and Slovenia Control. The research can be done at Honeywell’s Brno, Czech Republic, development center.
Darwin will use human-AI teaming to handle key challenges for single-pilot operations in air transport aircraft, including: “The necessity to keep cockpit workload sufficiently low to permit one person to handle even essentially the most challenges; the necessity to switch the second pair of eyes to cross-check actions of the pilot in command; and the necessity to detect and mitigate a pilot incapacitation.”
Universal Avionics
Universal Avionics has accomplished initial flight testing of its software-based interactive flight management system (i-FMS) in Austria, on a government-owned Bell 212 helicopter. The tests are a part of a joint effort with Universal parent company Elbit, testing the i-FMS as an add-on to the helicopter’s mission computers.
The goal of the tests is to enable NextGen capabilities using global navigation satellite system features. These include RNAV (area navigation), RNP (required navigation performance), and VNAV (vertical navigation), for use for all phases of flight when flying in civilian airspace and without special air traffic control handling, based on Universal.
“By combining civil and military mission management without special handling by the ATC, customers can benefit from state-of-the-art, efficient flight capabilities,” said Universal CEO Dror Yahav.
During test flights, pilots demonstrated holding patterns and floating waypoints in civilian airspace in addition to loading and flying SIDs/STARs, using RNAV to and from heliports and airports, and using actual and required navigation performance allowing the system to offer VNAV guidance in climb, cruise, and descent. Further improvements were realized during one other flight test in October.
Since it is software-based i-FMS might be hosted on a wide range of hardware platforms, and customers can specify desired functionalities. In a future development, i-FMS will integrate with Universal’s SkyLens head-wearable display “to project waypoints and knowledge from the FMS into the actual world,” based on Universal. “This Augmented Reality will enable pilots, for instance, to interact with features through head/eye tracking and a range button on the aircraft throttle.”
Universal’s TSO’d Aperture uses multiple video inputs to deliver improved imagery on flight deck displays. Aperture processes eight video streams and might output them to 4 independent users, based on Universal Avionics, “enhancing safety and improving decision-making for flight crews and mission specialists.”
With near-zero latency, Aperture meets design assurance level A, the best level of integrity in industrial aviation, Universal said. Ongoing development will add “more video/sensor channels, low-latency video aggregation and manipulation, and generation of synthetic imagery.” Eventually, it plans to make use of these capabilities to offer augmented-reality solutions, which could include “visual positioning, obstacle detection, taxi guidance, and traffic awareness to dramatically improve their situational awareness in high-workload environments.”
Collins Aerospace
Adam Evanschwartz, who leads Collins Aerospace’s avionics business unit product strategy, outlined “technology frontiers” that the corporate is working on, “which you may view as constructing blocks for future aircraft and flight deck solutions. We’re engaged with OEMs, and so you may begin to see these, and a few are gonna be very evolutionary changes.” These are all geared toward enhancing safety by reducing the workload on pilots.
“Perception sensing” involves sensors that, in the long run, will help the pilot and the aircraft make sense of what’s occurring in the surface world. This might include image recognition so the aircraft can detect and avoid non-cooperative traffic. Vision-based landing systems will complement information that pilots get from enhanced flight vision systems and head-up displays, including millimeter-wave sensors, and use all that information to ease the pilot’s workload, for instance, by robotically warning that something is obstructing the runway.
Resilient navigation is one other vital constructing block, and this addresses issues with GNSS jamming and spoofing, in addition to 5G cellular interference with radar altimeters.
Ultimately yr’s NBAA-BACE, Collins demonstrated its pilot support system, which uses flight deck sensors to capture objective data on pilot alertness. “This can be a big frontier in all of the segments we service,” Evanschwartz said. “It starts with the concept of a fatigue risk management system and the view that this is significant to have in place, but heavily reliant on subjective reports by individuals to evaluate their fatigue state.”
Collins is working on advanced sensor systems that would replace antiquated systems similar to air data computers counting on pneumatic pressure inputs and dissimilar inputs that provide one other layer of redundancy. As an alternative of counting on pilots to detect when an input is bad, the system is designed to guage the standard of the dissimilar inputs and select the perfect.
The communications constructing block is full-time inflight connectivity for the avionics. The concept is to cut back crew workload by letting the avionics do the work. For instance, as an alternative of constructing the pilot input a brand new frequency, the avionics could handle that as a push-to-load function into the FMS. Collins can be working on natural language processing, speech-to-text and vice versa, for routine communications with controllers.
Finally, Collins is tackling task automation within the cockpit, with easy measures that may reduce pilot workload. Using extensive sensing capability, which modern aircraft have already built-in, the avionics could confirm checklist items. If the checklist says to modify on the landing light, for instance, it could poll the sensors and ensure that the landing light is on and show that item as complete. An additional extension of this idea is to make use of the checklist as a control input, by letting it not only confirm that an item is accomplished but in addition effecting the change. This might vastly reduce the time needed to get an airplane able to fly.
SVO is a continuation of the trend of aircraft becoming simplified and requiring fewer crew members, Evanschwartz explained. “We’re making the most of these constructing blocks and what’s possible within the design of the flight deck. It’s vital for continuous improvement in aviation safety…and it’s also very natural, given where we’re with today’s cutting-edge and what’s more likely to be ahead in the following generation of airplanes and flight decks.”
Thales
Thales’ avionics activities are focused on three major trends, based on Marc Duval-Destin, v-p strategy, products and innovation, flight avionics activities: refocusing human resources on their strategic and decision-making added values; increasingly intelligent automation, including AI, to serve humans; and “hyper-developed ground/onboard collaboration because of increasingly available, reliable, and cyber-secured connectivity.”
Ten years ago, Thales began working on its “cockpit of the long run” concept, which ought to be fielded in helicopters by 2027. One among the outcomes of this research is the FlytX large-display system “designed to cut back training, optimize workload, and increase safety” and display “only relevant and mandatory information…when needed.” Although touchscreen control is at the center of FlytX, airframers can opt to incorporate cursor-control devices and keyboards.
One other tool that Thales has developed is PureFlyt, a connected FMS that’s linked to non-avionics systems similar to electronic flight bags and operational control centers and that may benefit from real-time weather information, helping pilots optimize the flight trajectory.
Although fly-by-wire flight controls have predominately featured in larger aircraft, Thales is pursuing opportunities to use this technology to smaller aircraft, specifically urban air mobility and electric aircraft. “We’re convinced that fly-by-wire is an asset for aircraft safety, performance, and luxury,” he said. In larger aircraft, he added, “by protecting the aircraft from high loads, fly-by-wire…allowed the aircraft designers to cut back the aircraft structural weight, providing for fuel savings and for much longer range.”
Thales has been manufacturing fly-by-wire components, specifically flight control computers, for Gulfstream large-cabin jets for the reason that G650, with the most recent the G700.
As more aircraft adopt fly-by-wire controls, Duval-Destin said, “These capabilities will allow aircraft manufacturers [to introduce] recent functions—and so they do—to expand the capabilities and safety of their aircraft.”
Garmin
Garmin has been incrementally adding helpful recent features, not only to its integrated avionics systems but in addition to individual products, and lots of the features come under the corporate’s Autonomi umbrella. Autonomi was created after Garmin’s family of flight control assistance products got here about, and since then more capabilities have been added. This includes electronic stability and protection (ESP) in autopilots, emergency descent mode for business jets, Autoland for single-pilot airplanes, Smart Rudder Bias to assist with engine failure in multiengine airplanes, and Smart Glide to guide airplanes robotically to an appropriate airport in case of engine failure.
In reality, Autoland was principally a culmination of previous technologies. “It was all of them working together,” said Dan Lind, senior director, aviation sales and marketing. “ESP could activate emergency descent mode, which could turn into activating Autoland.” ESP itself evolved from its introduction in Cirrus SR single-engine airplanes in 2008, adding overspeed, underspeed, and paired go-around capability. “It expanded into its own little suite of technology that’s enhanced safety overall,” he said.
“There hasn’t been an inflight loss-of-control accident in Cirruses equipped with ESP,” said Phil Straub, Garmin’s executive v-p and managing director for aviation. “A variety of people got here back to their family members for this reason.”
The ESP capability isn’t just available in Garmin’s integrated flight decks but in addition in its lowest-cost autopilot, the GFC 500. The advantages are thus available for any aircraft that might be certified for installation of the GFC 500, including a Cessna 195 that was the most recent undergoing the STC process at Garmin’s Olathe, Kansas hangar in November. “These airplanes made within the Fifties may have ESP and these kind of protections in them,” Straub said.
Avidyne
“Each on the OEM and retrofit level, flight controls are going to be where lots of the motion is,” said Dan Schwinn, Avidyne president and CEO. Tens of hundreds of aircraft have old autopilots which might be either poorly integrated with avionics or unrepairable. “Persons are in search of what’s next,” he said. The present general aviation autopilots, he added, are the baseline technology, and we should always expect to see development progress from that baseline.
Avidyne can be working with AAM corporations on integrated avionics systems and AI incorporated into avionics in recent electric aircraft.
These technologies aren’t only for technology’s sake but all geared toward improving safety and utility and making pilots more comfortable with their skills. “There’s so many advantages,” he explained. “There’s the protection one if you’re in unlucky conditions, or for those who occur to be a bit bit rusty. There’s the flexibility to have very protected personal minimums which might be a bit bit more aggressive based on having really good systems on board. [This] means you need to use your airplane more, which suggests you simply increase the utility [of your airplane].”
This can be a natural transition, Schwinn said, because persons are getting more used to automobile features similar to lane assist and automatic braking, “all this sort of stuff that’s becoming increasingly more mainstream, and persons are saying, ‘what is the flying equivalent of those driver assistance systems?’
“Technology has enabled a far wider number of possible solutions. The primary go-around of integrated flight decks within the 2000s was an enormous step forward from mechanical instrumentation. The subsequent generation goes to place far more useful stuff on those screens and hopefully not in a way that’s harder to make use of. Now I feel the following 10 years goes to be way far more innovation, plenty in avionics.”
Genesys Aerosystems
Genesys Aerosystems, a Moog company, sees key avionics developments within the modularity of systems, artificial intelligence integration, and immersive cockpits with larger displays, virtual copilots, and other advanced technologies, based on senior marketing manager Edward Popek. “As software and processing power proceed to enhance, it’s a natural migration to flexible platforms tailorable to specific mission needs, AI processing and alerting for pilot actions, and integrating more virtual reality elements within the cockpit to enhance situational awareness and mission effectiveness.”
One among Genesys’ primary product lines is autopilots, however it also manufactures flight displays and radios in addition to a full avionics suite for fixed- and rotary wing aircraft. Like other avionics manufacturers, Genesys is exploring advanced functionality to assist pilots fly safely in various weather conditions. “We imagine further integration of additional features to help the pilot in emergency situations similar to autoland and autothrottle plus autorotation for helicopters,” Popek said. “We also envision additional features to enable single-pilot crewed aircraft in IFR conditions similar to hover hold for helicopters and lower minimums accuracy for flight into lower visibility conditions.”
Popek said Genesys sees evolutionary changes as an alternative of radical technologies as a result of the necessity for “exhaustive testing and high safety criticality levels to maintain flying protected. This implies we are going to see larger displays with more software features and more functionality built into existing avionics.”