Horizon Aircraft Selects AEE Avionics Platform for Cavorite X7 Demonstrator

Cana­di­an aero­space com­pa­ny Hori­zon Air­craft has select­ed Ger­many-based AEE Air­craft Elec­tron­ics Engi­neer­ing GmbH to sup­ply its MIAU 1000 avion­ics plat­form for the pow­ered-lift con­trol sys­tem of its Cavorite X7 hybrid-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft demon­stra­tor.

The sys­tem will sup­port the pro­cess­ing and con­trol require­ments of the aircraft’s elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered lift fans, which are con­cealed with­in its wings, along­side its con­ven­tion­al propul­sion sys­tems. Hori­zon is tar­get­ing appli­ca­tions includ­ing emer­gency med­ical ser­vices, search and res­cue, and defence mis­sions.

AEE, based in Wessling, Ger­many, devel­ops avion­ics hard­ware and soft­ware for avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions. Found­ed in 1987, the com­pa­ny says it has devel­oped more than 100 avion­ics devices, with over 4,000 units oper­at­ing in cer­ti­fied air­craft world­wide. Its ser­vices include engi­neer­ing, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sup­port, pro­duc­tion and main­te­nance.

The MIAU 1000 is a com­pact avion­ics hard­ware plat­form designed for appli­ca­tions includ­ing gate­way com­put­ing, motor and actu­a­tor inter­fac­ing, data con­cen­tra­tion and flight con­trol. AEE says its design address­es the size, weight and pow­er con­straints of air­craft sys­tems, with indi­vid­u­al­ly iso­lat­ed inter­faces intend­ed to sup­port con­nec­tions between high-volt­age equip­ment and safe­ty-crit­i­cal avion­ics.

Accord­ing to AEE, the plat­form was devel­oped in line with avi­a­tion stan­dards includ­ing AMC 20–152A and DO-254, with a design intend­ed to sup­port devel­op­ment assur­ance lev­els up to DAL A. It is also designed to meet applic­a­ble envi­ron­men­tal cat­e­gories under RTCA DO-160G.

Hori­zon Air­craft is devel­op­ing the Cavorite X7 as a hybrid-elec­tric VTOL air­craft intend­ed to com­bine ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing with con­ven­tion­al wing-borne cruise flight. The aircraft’s design incor­po­rates lift fans with­in the wings for ver­ti­cal flight, along­side a con­ven­tion­al propul­sion arrange­ment for for­ward flight. Hori­zon Air­craft says the con­fig­u­ra­tion is intend­ed to deliv­er high­er cruise speeds than heli­copters while retain­ing the abil­i­ty to oper­ate with­out a con­ven­tion­al run­way.

The agree­ment adds AEE to the Cavorite X7’s sup­pli­er net­work as Hori­zon Air­craft devel­ops its full-scale demon­stra­tor. The com­pa­ny has stat­ed that it intends to pur­sue pro­duc­tion fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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