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Honeywell unveils next-generation avionics lab for unmanned aerial systems and Urban Air Mobility

A new research and devel­op­ment lab built by Hon­ey­well is demon­strat­ing the company’s tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties in both hard­ware and soft­ware for the unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems (UAS) and urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) mar­kets.

The lab, which resem­bles a con­cep­tu­al UAM vehi­cle flight deck with real hard­ware, is locat­ed in Honeywell’s Deer Val­ley avion­ics facil­i­ty in Phoenix, Ari­zona.

It is the first of its kind to demon­strate actu­al fly-by-wire con­trols and vehi­cle avion­ics inte­grat­ed in a lab set­ting, and will be used to devel­op, test and demon­strate Honeywell’s tech­nol­o­gy aimed at sim­pli­fy­ing the oper­a­tions of future vehi­cles.

Stéphane Fymat, Vice Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, UAS/UAM, Hon­ey­well Aero­space, said: “With the influx of new UAM vehi­cles tak­ing to the skies in the com­ing years, we’re see­ing a grow­ing need for oper­a­tors to test real-world tech­nol­o­gy in a lab set­ting.

“It is essen­tial that these vehi­cles are as intu­itive as pos­si­ble and that we have a ded­i­cat­ed space to ensure our sys­tems make that a real­i­ty. With this new lab, we can ful­ly sim­u­late real vehi­cle func­tion­al­i­ty with real hard­ware for our cus­tomers, which will cut back on cost­ly flight test hours and help them reach their goal of attain­ing sim­pli­fied vehi­cle oper­a­tions.”

Con­fig­ured to look like the front end of an air­craft, the new lab has one seat sit­u­at­ed in front of a pri­ma­ry dis­play with three addi­tion­al large wrap­around dis­plays to view the sim­u­lat­ed out­side envi­ron­ment around the air­craft.

Cus­tomers can use a con­trol stick to fly a dig­i­tal ver­sion of their air­craft through a high-res­o­lu­tion mod­el of a city. Hon­ey­well com­put­ers and actu­a­tors mount­ed on near­by work­bench­es adapt in real time to pilot inputs, winds and ther­mals, and sim­u­lat­ed haz­ards.

The con­cept of sim­pli­fied vehi­cle oper­a­tions (SVO), com­bines automa­tion and human fac­tors best prac­tices with the goal of reduc­ing the amount of knowl­edge an oper­a­tor must have to safe­ly fly an air­craft.

It has hard­ware typ­i­cal­ly seen in a tra­di­tion­al air­craft cock­pit and Honeywell’s Com­pact Fly-by-Wire Sys­tem acts as the brains of the oper­a­tion, with flight routes and actu­al con­trol laws built into the soft­ware, so the sim­u­lat­ed vehi­cle will oper­ate the same way it would in the real world.

Andrew Bak­er, Senior Sys­tems Engi­neer at Hon­ey­well, said: “These are actu­al­ly very sim­ple to fly. SVO is the new buzz­word in how pilots are going to fly these vehi­cles of the future. We love hav­ing pilots come in here, because part of SVO is to actu­al­ly retrain them on how easy it is to fly these type of vehi­cles.

“We’re able to sim­u­late a lot of dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments that these air­craft will fly in. We’re able to pull in a lot of our hard­ware to inte­grate and test.”

Hon­ey­well offers cer­ti­fi­ca­tion exper­tise as well as a full line of avion­ics, propul­sion and oper­a­tional sys­tems for unmanned air­craft and UAM vehi­cles.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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