Curtiss-Wright selected to supply avionics system for use in flight testing of new eVTOL aircraft

Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solu­tions divi­sion has been award­ed a con­tract to pro­vide an avion­ics sys­tem and net­work­ing solu­tions for an unnamed eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er.

No fur­ther details have been revealed about the iden­ti­ty of the eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er, but in a press release, Cur­tiss-Wright has said the elec­tric fixed-wing air­craft will use its flight con­trol com­put­er and vehi­cle eth­er­net switch solu­tions dur­ing the flight test stage of the new aircraft’s devel­op­ment.

Lynn Bam­ford, Pres­i­dent, Defense and Pow­er Seg­ments at Cur­tiss-Wright, said: “We are very pleased to be select­ed to sup­port this excit­ing new eVTOL air­craft pro­gram with our indus­try-lead­ing, ultra-small pro­cess­ing and net­work­ing avion­ics solu­tions.

“With a lega­cy that began with famed avi­a­tion pio­neers, the Wright broth­ers and Glenn Cur­tiss, we look for­ward to the devel­op­ment of this new all-elec­tric air­craft for which our extreme­ly com­pact, high­ly rugged, and cost-effec­tive elec­tron­ic sub­sys­tems are ide­al­ly suit­ed.”

Under the con­tract, Cur­tiss-Wright will sup­ply its ful­ly rugged Parvus Dura­COR 311, a USFF embed­ded computer/controller based on a low-pow­er quad-core Intel® Atom™ E3845 (Bay Trail‑I) proces­sor, and the Parvus DuraNET 20–11, a USFF 8‑port Giga­bit Eth­er­net (GbE) switch. Deliv­er­ies are sched­uled to begin this month.

Both prod­ucts are opti­mized for extreme­ly demand­ing SWaP‑C appli­ca­tions, such as space-con­strained rotor­craft and unmanned air­borne plat­forms, which are espe­cial­ly sen­si­tive to addi­tion­al weight that can lim­it flight dura­tion and/or dis­tance.

The Dura­COR 311 mea­sures less than 40 in³ in vol­ume and weighs less than 1.5 lb, while the “pock­et-sized” DuraNET 20–11 mea­sures only 10 in3 in vol­ume, and weighs only 0.5 lb.

Cur­tiss-Wright USFF elec­tron­ic sub­sys­tems, which are ide­al for use on size, weight, pow­er and cost (SWaP‑C) con­strained air­borne plat­forms, have pre­vi­ous­ly been select­ed for use on mul­ti­ple eVTOL devel­op­ment pro­grams in addi­tion to this most recent design win.

The com­pa­ny designs and man­u­fac­tures the inte­grat­ed sys­tem prod­ucts cov­ered by this con­tract at its facil­i­ty in Salt Lake City, Utah.