Douglas Martens explained that weight is a key driving factor in the AAM market. In the next generation of electric-powered aircraft, the display of fuel usage information and communicating that data to the pilot will change, as well as performance estimation. “Our organization, the UAM group, has only officially existed for a little over two years now, but a lot of the technologies that we’re now selling, utilizing, and continuing to develop already existed-whether they were drawing-board or early prototypes-and some were already commercialized.”Īnother consideration for AAM aircraft is fuel management.
Honeywell’s development of avionics systems for AAM aircraft has gravitated naturally towards making products smaller and lighter, said Andrew Barker, senior director of sales marketing for UAM/UAS. The lab showcases Honeywell’s latest technology such as its compact fly-by-wire system, a scaled-down version of what Honeywell supplies for commercial airliners. “We also need to be leveraging advances in computing and miniaturization to make that happen,” Xu added. In tailoring avionics to smaller AAM aircraft, they’ve had to think creatively about the design of systems, boundaries, and architectures. “The functions are similar, but the vehicles are very different,” Xu commented.įor eVTOL aircraft, he said, “weight is still key, even more so than conventional aircraft,” because they must be able to carry the whole weight of the aircraft throughout the vertical lift-off phase. The design processes for avionics in conventional aircraft translate easily to drones and eVTOL aircraft.
It is partly driven by improvements in hardware, and also by intelligently considering how to partition the functions of the fly-by-wire system among avionics, flight control, and actuation systems. To scale down a system like the fly-by-wire for integrating into smaller aircraft, said Xu, they must leverage advances in computing. “The pilot doesn’t have to manage a throttle and thrust traditionally it’s all been simplified.” Xu continued, “This is the kind of technology that we have demonstrated and that the industry has demonstrated across a large class of commercial aircraft, brought down to the form factor that works with UAM and UAS vehicles.”ĭouglas Martens, director of OEM sales and new business development for Honeywell Aerospace, commented that the compact fly-by-wire system is designed with redundancy and triple dissimilarity-each box has a different hardware configuration-which allows for a simplified control system. We can also make the control intuitive and safe.” The pilot’s decisions can be translated simply and accurately into the fly-by-wire logic in the onboard, and to the aircraft’s actuators and motors. “Because the flight control and how you interact with the aircraft becomes more software-defined, you can customize it.
“The aircraft is always kept in the safe zone of operations,” he explained. Honeywell Aerospace’s AAM lab featured two hands-on simulators demonstrating simplified vehicle operations (SVO).Ī key feature of the fly-by-wire system, according to Xu, is the built-in flight safety envelope protection. “The fly-by-wire system on a big aircraft is hundreds of pounds.” To scale down the system for UAS, he said, “We have to be smart in thinking about what the system could be and what the essential functions are that it must perform.” Jia Xu, senior director of strategy for urban air mobility (UAM) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), shared the process that has gone into developing a compact, purpose-designed fly-by-wire system. The compact fly-by-wire flight control system is one example of how Honeywell has scaled down a system used in conventional aircraft. At a preview event in April, in advance of the lab’s formal opening, experts offered attendees insights into Honeywell’s compact fly-by-wire systems, detect-and-avoid radar, SATCOM, and other components that are optimized for use in advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft.
The company’s aerospace engineering team has focused on enabling communications, navigation, and surveillance systems for unmanned aircraft and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. Honeywell Aerospace recently revealed its latest developments in avionics technologies at its new Advanced Air Mobility Lab in Phoenix, Arizona.