Almost three years after Genesys Aerosystems was purchased by Moog, a manufacturer of precision control components and systems, the Mineral Wells, Texas-based avionics manufacturer’s brand has transitioned into the Moog color and styling. The new branding can be seen this week at Genesys' NBAA-BACE booth.
“It’s important as we grow to do more work with the U.S. government to have the backing of a big company like Moog,” said Genesys director of sales and marketing Jamie Luster. “We want to keep the Genesys Aerosystems name; it does have traction in [the] marketplace. We value it but we value what Moog as our parent brings to the industry and especially to the customers that we’re pursuing.”
The new Genesys website, she added, “will be geared more for special-missions military type markets without losing that small-company feel we’ve always had.” However, Genesys, which manufactures general aviation autopilots under the S-TEC brand name, “is not moving away from our general aviation partners by any means,” she emphasized. “As we look onward and upward, we have to look at who our future customers will be.”
Moog had already done some work on autonomous flight, including fully autonomous test flights of a Robinson R44 helicopter in 2021. “They recognize that optionally piloted aircraft and autonomous flight are going to be [the] future of aviation,” Luster said.
Although Moog engineers developed the control laws that enabled the R44 flights, the company lacked experience with FAA certification on standard-category aircraft. That made the acquisition of Genesys Aerosystems, with its expertise in autopilot development and certification to stringent DO178 software standards, a perfect fit.
“They looked at us to merge and port their control law intelligence into our already certified hardware with new software,” she said, “and get it installed on aircraft and be certified for things we don’t want the pilot to do.”
The idea is for autonomously flown aircraft to be deployed for life-threatening operations such as moving cargo in hostile environments, firefighting, and military missions. “[These operations] “are much safer when there is not a pilot on board,” she said. "That’s where we at Moog and Genesys see aviation going and we want to be on the forefront, creating safety-enhancing avionics for those types of missions.”
Genesys has been working with Volocopter to help it develop the German company’s eVTOL flight controls. “That’s our first partnership where we’re developing from scratch,” Luster said. “We want to continue to add partners, but we’re also doing it selectively. We expect to go in both directions for newly manufactured autonomous vehicles and making current aircraft optionally piloted or unmanned.”
Moog has also been working on the HE350 Recluse, an uncrewed hybrid-electric aircraft designed to carry 500 pounds at up to 80 mph to a range of nearly 150 miles. The Recluse is a further development of technology that Moog acquired from its purchase of assets of the SureFly program from Workhorse Group in 2019.
Meanwhile, Genesys is moving ahead with its 4th-axis autopilot system for the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, with testing being conducted by XP Services in Tullahoma, Tennessee. This product will eventually include auto takeoff and landing capability, Luster said.
Genesys is retaining the S-TEC brand for its line of autopilots but also manufactures flight displays and radios and offers a full avionics suite for the rotorcraft market, all of which are on display at the company's BACE exhibit.
Aircraft that carry the Genesys avionics suite include the Airbus Helicopters EC-145e, Bell 412, Leonardo TH-73 Thrasher and TH-119 trainer helicopters, and Sikorsky S-61 Triton and UH-60 Black Hawk.
On the fixed-wing autopilot side, the latest Genesys projects include the S-TEC 5000 digital autopilot for the Cessna Citation 550 and 560 twinjets. Flight testing is underway, and issuance of a supplemental type certificate (STC) is planned for early to mid-2024.
This autopilot will be the first Genesys system retrofitted to a Part 25 aircraft. Genesys does have its autopilot on other Part 25 aircraft, including the Casa CN-235 and C-212 turboprops, but these are factory forward-fit installations.