Joby Acquires Aerospace Software Engineering Firm Avionyx to Support FAA Certification Testing

Joby Avi­a­tion has announced its acqui­si­tion of Avionyx, an estab­lished aero­space soft­ware engi­neer­ing firm, to sup­port its air­craft type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA).

Based in San Jose, Cos­ta Rica, Avionyx has been a respect­ed provider of soft­ware devel­op­ment and ver­i­fi­ca­tion solu­tions to the aero­space com­mu­ni­ty for over 30 years.

Soft­ware ver­i­fi­ca­tion is a crit­i­cal ele­ment of com­mer­cial aero­space cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, requir­ing engi­neers to review, ana­lyze, and test the soft­ware deployed across the air­craft accord­ing to FAA reg­u­la­tions and stan­dards.

Avionyx has exten­sive expe­ri­ence per­form­ing soft­ware ver­i­fi­ca­tion ser­vices to both FAA and Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) stan­dards.

Joby first award­ed Avionyx a con­tract in 2021 to assist with soft­ware test­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion for the company’s eVTOL air­craft, which has numer­ous sys­tems onboard that require exten­sive review, analy­sis, and test­ing pur­suant to FAA reg­u­la­tions for flight soft­ware.

Joby devel­op­ment assur­ance lead Tom Fer­rell said: “Acquir­ing Avionyx puts us in excel­lent posi­tion to meet the reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments nec­es­sary for us to bring the Joby air­craft to mar­ket.

“Hav­ing worked along­side Avionyx for the last year, I’m con­tin­u­ous­ly impressed by the wealth of expe­ri­ence they bring to our soft­ware ver­i­fi­ca­tion activ­i­ties.”

Using its Vehi­cle Soft­ware Inte­gra­tion Lab (VSIL) at Joby’s facil­i­ty in Mari­na, CA, the Com­pa­ny will lever­age flight sim­u­la­tion and hard­ware emu­la­tion capa­bil­i­ties to rapid­ly con­duct thou­sands of pre-pro­grammed tests nec­es­sary to val­i­date and ver­i­fy the per­for­mance of var­i­ous air­craft soft­ware sys­tems.

A sim­i­lar facil­i­ty will be set up in San Jose, Cos­ta Rica, to accel­er­ate soft­ware ver­i­fi­ca­tion efforts.

Avionyx CEO Lar­ry All­go­od added: “Joby’s air­craft is one of the most trans­for­ma­tive projects that I have seen dur­ing my career, and our team is excit­ed to play a part in mak­ing it a real­i­ty.”

Joby is tar­get­ing the launch of its aer­i­al rideshar­ing ser­vice in 2024 with its pilot­ed five-seat eVTOL air­craft that can car­ry four pas­sen­gers at speeds of up to 200 mph, with a max­i­mum range of 150 miles on a sin­gle charge.

In March, Joby Avi­a­tion sub­mit­ted its first area-spe­cif­ic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plan to the FAA, the first of sev­er­al that it will be required to sub­mit, which includes lay­ing out the com­bi­na­tion of design reports, analy­sis and test­ing that it will employ to demon­strate com­pli­ance with rig­or­ous FAA safe­ty stan­dards for one func­tion­al area of the air­craft.

In Feb­ru­ary, Joby Avi­a­tion began FAA con­for­mi­ty test­ing with its first series of con­for­mi­ty tests, observed and doc­u­ment­ed by an on-site FAA Des­ig­nat­ed Engi­neer­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (DER), which was com­plet­ed at Toray Advanced Com­pos­ites USA’s facil­i­ty in Mor­gan Hill, Cal­i­for­nia.