DIEHL AVIATION EXPANDS COOPERATION WITH VOLOCOPTER FOR THE VOLOCITY AIR TAXI

Volo­copter and avion­ics sup­pli­er Diehl Aero­space are now coop­er­at­ing on the devel­op­ment of an opti­cal split­ter that pro­vides con­trol infor­ma­tion to the VoloC­i­ty air tax­i’s 18 rotors to com­ple­ment the flight con­trol sys­tem and oth­er com­po­nents for bat­tery man­age­ment.

Diehl Aero­space, a joint ven­ture between Diehl Avi­a­tion and Thales, has already devel­oped the flight con­trol com­put­er for the VoloC­i­ty, includ­ing the pri­ma­ry and back­up con­trol com­put­ers.

In con­trast to con­ven­tion­al fly-by-wire con­trol sys­tems, the elec­tri­cal sig­nals from the flight con­trol com­put­er are trans­lat­ed into opti­cal sig­nals and con­se­quent­ly con­trolled opto­elec­tron­i­cal­ly. Instead of elec­tri­cal sig­nals via cop­per wires, light sig­nals are now trans­mit­ted by opti­cal fibre to con­trol com­mands.

‘Fly-By-Light’ con­trol is immune to elec­tro­mag­net­ic inter­fer­ence from cell phones or trans­mis­sion tow­ers, a key safe­ty cri­te­ri­on in view of VoloC­i­ty’s planned low alti­tude flights in cities.

Diehl is also devel­op­ing a data con­cen­tra­tion unit (DCU) that col­lects opti­cal sig­nals from 18 rotors from an opti­cal inter­face and con­verts them into dig­i­tal avion­ics sig­nals pro­vid­ing the pilot with feed­back on the sta­tus of engine speed and tem­per­a­ture.

Diehl Aero­space CEO Flo­ri­an Maier said: “We are excit­ed to fur­ther expand our part­ner­ship with Volo­copter, an inno­v­a­tive pio­neer in the UAM mar­ket, in bring­ing our many years of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in flight con­trol sys­tems to the table.”

In addi­tion to the flight con­trol sys­tem, Diehl will sup­ply sub-com­po­nents for the VoloC­i­ty bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tem to mon­i­tor the aircraft’s nine bat­tery packs, which are replaced and recharged after the flight.

Dur­ing the flight, the pilot receives rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on remain­ing ener­gy and con­trol of the pow­er sup­ply.

With its lat­est tech­ni­cal devel­op­ments for Volo­copter’s VoloC­i­ty, Diehl claims it is mak­ing a deci­sive con­tri­bu­tion to ensur­ing the nec­es­sary safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty for air taxis and car­go drones of the future.

In Novem­ber 2021, Air­bus signed a tri­lat­er­al agree­ment with Thales and Diehl Aero­space to joint­ly devel­op the flight con­trol com­put­ers of its CityAir­bus eVTOL air­craft, NextGen, which will com­bine com­put­ing pow­er with light­weight design and high safe­ty stan­dards.

Diehl Aero­space first signed a con­tract to devel­op and pro­duce pri­ma­ry and back-up flight con­trol com­put­ers for Volocopter’s VoloC­i­ty eVTOL air­craft in May 2020, mark­ing its entry into urban air mobil­i­ty.