Airframe and engine design hasn’t changed much in the past decades and, apart from the opportunities provided by electric propulsion, likely won’t progress dramatically in the near future. The design of avionics and the way pilots control the increasingly electronic aircraft they fly, however, are on a rapid pace of advancement. The future of avionics is not just coming: it is already here and profoundly affecting the way we fly.
One of the most interesting developments is the declining cost of advanced flight control systems—autopilots—and how some are nearly morphing into fly-by-wire controls. This ultimately will make flying easier and will enable more people to become safe pilots without the enormous training burden that today’s pilots must endure. The technical term for this is simplified vehicle operations (SVO), and it has applications in all segments of aviation, especially upcoming advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft.
Honeywell
Andrew Barker, Honeywell Aerospace v-p of integrated avionics, is spending a lot of time thinking about these issues as he oversees development of the company’s next avionics platform, Anthem. “There's so much intelligence that we could capitalize on,” he said, but typically avionics design continues to incorporate traditional ways of pilot interaction. “[As] the physical controls get less, as the autonomy and intelligence in the avionics proves itself, then pilots become more comfortable relying on the avionics. So that intersection [the pilot interface], it changes pretty significantly; you create smarter and more capable avionics systems.”
A simple example is the baro setting, which is manual and done by pilots. The only recent automation of this function has been to synchronize the setting across all altimeters in the instrument panel so pilots don’t have to remember to adjust the baro setting on each primary flight display and each backup display.
“Realistically,” he asked, “if my avionics are smart enough, do I need a physical baro control? I can get a baro reading over the radio. My avionics can go, ‘Oh, you just got a baro update, do you want to accept it?’ Yes [or] no. Okay. Done.”
The Anthem platform is exploring concepts such as this, as well as voice control and combinations of touchscreens and physical controls. As it has done with its Epic avionics platform but to an even greater degree, aircraft manufacturers will be able to tailor Anthem interfaces to their specific needs. Anthem is designed for small to large aircraft in every segment. So far, it has been selected by AAM developers Vertical Aerospace, Lilium, and Supernal, and more OEM announcements are expected soon.
One huge benefit of all the work being done on AAM flight controls is that fly-by-wire systems are being adapted to smaller vehicles, which will lead to sophisticated controls moving downmarket into light aircraft. “That's the objective of what we did with our compact fly-by-wire,” Barker explained. “Let's open up that envelope and bring the safety and the ability of that fly-by-wire system into general aviation. Our compact fly-by-wire is a huge step in that direction.”
Barker sees avionics evolving so that fly-by-wire flight controls become “the backbone of the airplane and avionics. Then you get into that reduced crew and single-pilot and that simplified vehicle operations continuum.”
What that continuum looks like could eventually be a lone pilot supported by a team on the ground, connected via secure links to the airplane. One of Anthem’s many features is cloud connectivity, and that will facilitate this kind of operation. The ground operator might only need touchscreens and a keyboard and no physical controls. “Maybe everything is a touch [control] once we go to fully on the ground,” he said.
Further to these developments, Honeywell is leading research into the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to support single-pilot operations under a European Union SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking project. The goal is to “develop AI-powered digital assistants and a human-AI collaboration framework to support both extended minimum crew operations and single-pilot operations, ensuring the same (or higher) level of safety and same (or lower) workload as operations with a full crew today,” according to Honeywell.
The Digital Assistants for Reducing Workload and Increasing collaboration (Darwin) project includes partners Pipistrel, Germany’s DLR research institute, Eurocontrol, EASA, and Slovenia Control. The research will be done at Honeywell’s Brno, Czech Republic, development center.
Darwin will use human-AI teaming to address key challenges for single-pilot operations in air transport aircraft, including: “The need to keep cockpit workload sufficiently low to allow one person to address even the most demanding situations; the need to replace the second pair of eyes to cross-check actions of the pilot in command; and the need to detect and mitigate a pilot incapacitation.”
Universal Avionics
Universal Avionics has completed initial flight testing of its software-based interactive flight management system (i-FMS) in Austria, on a government-owned Bell 212 helicopter. The tests are part of a joint effort with Universal parent company Elbit, testing the i-FMS as an add-on to the helicopter’s mission computers.
The goal of the tests is to enable NextGen capabilities using global navigation satellite system features. These include RNAV (area navigation), RNP (required navigation performance), and VNAV (vertical navigation), to be used for all phases of flight when flying in civilian airspace and without special air traffic control handling, according to Universal.
“By combining civil and military mission management without special handling by the ATC, customers can take advantage of state-of-the-art, efficient flight capabilities,” said Universal CEO Dror Yahav.
During test flights, pilots demonstrated holding patterns and floating waypoints in civilian airspace as well as loading and flying SIDs/STARs, using RNAV to and from heliports and airports, and using actual and required navigation performance allowing the system to provide VNAV guidance in climb, cruise, and descent. Further improvements were realized during another flight test in October.
Because it is software-based i-FMS can be hosted on a variety of hardware platforms, and customers can specify desired functionalities. In a future development, i-FMS will integrate with Universal’s SkyLens head-wearable display “to project waypoints and information from the FMS into the real world,” according to Universal. "This Augmented Reality will enable pilots, for example, to interact with features through head/eye tracking and a selection button on the aircraft throttle.”
Universal’s TSO’d Aperture uses multiple video inputs to deliver improved imagery on flight deck displays. Aperture processes eight video streams and can output them to four independent users, according to Universal Avionics, “enhancing safety and improving decision-making for flight crews and mission specialists.”
With near-zero latency, Aperture meets design assurance level A, the highest level of integrity in commercial aviation, Universal said. Ongoing development will add “more video/sensor channels, low-latency video aggregation and manipulation, and generation of synthetic imagery.” Eventually, it plans to use these capabilities to provide augmented-reality solutions, which could include “visual positioning, obstacle detection, taxi guidance, and traffic awareness to dramatically improve their situational awareness in high-workload environments.”
Collins Aerospace
Adam Evanschwartz, who leads Collins Aerospace’s avionics business unit product strategy, outlined “technology frontiers” that the company is working on, “which you could view as building blocks for future aircraft and flight deck solutions. We're engaged with OEMs, and so you'll start to see these, and some are gonna be very evolutionary changes.” These are all aimed at enhancing safety by reducing the workload on pilots.
“Perception sensing” involves sensors that, in the future, will help the pilot and the aircraft make sense of what’s going on in the outside world. This could include image recognition so the aircraft can detect and avoid non-cooperative traffic. Vision-based landing systems will supplement information that pilots get from enhanced flight vision systems and head-up displays, including millimeter-wave sensors, and use all that information to ease the pilot’s workload, for example, by automatically warning that something is blocking the runway.
Resilient navigation is another important building block, and this addresses issues with GNSS jamming and spoofing, as well as 5G cellular interference with radar altimeters.
At last year’s NBAA-BACE, Collins demonstrated its pilot support system, which uses flight deck sensors to capture objective data on pilot alertness. “This is a big frontier in all the segments we service,” Evanschwartz said. “It starts with the concept of a fatigue risk management system and the view that this is important to have in place, but heavily reliant on subjective reports by individuals to assess their fatigue state.”
Collins is working on advanced sensor systems that could replace antiquated systems such as air data computers relying on pneumatic pressure inputs and dissimilar inputs that provide another layer of redundancy. Instead of relying on pilots to detect when an input is bad, the system is designed to evaluate the quality of the dissimilar inputs and choose the best.
The communications building block is looking at full-time inflight connectivity for the avionics. The idea is to reduce crew workload by letting the avionics do the work. For example, instead of making the pilot input a new frequency, the avionics could handle that as a push-to-load function into the FMS. Collins is also working on natural language processing, speech-to-text and vice versa, for routine communications with controllers.
Finally, Collins is tackling task automation in the cockpit, with simple measures that will reduce pilot workload. Using extensive sensing capability, which modern aircraft have already built-in, the avionics could verify checklist items. If the checklist says to switch on the landing light, for example, it could poll the sensors and confirm that the landing light is on and show that item as complete. A further extension of this concept is to use the checklist as a control input, by letting it not only confirm that an item is completed but also effecting the change. This could vastly reduce the time needed to get an airplane ready to fly.
SVO is a continuation of the trend of aircraft becoming simplified and requiring fewer crew members, Evanschwartz explained. “We’re taking advantage of these building blocks and what’s possible in the design of the flight deck. It’s important for continuous improvement in aviation safety…and it’s also very natural, given where we are with today’s state of the art and what’s likely to be ahead in the next generation of airplanes and flight decks.”
Thales
Thales’ avionics activities are focused on three main trends, according to Marc Duval-Destin, v-p strategy, products and innovation, flight avionics activities: refocusing human resources on their strategic and decision-making added values; increasingly intelligent automation, including AI, to serve humans; and “hyper-developed ground/onboard collaboration thanks to increasingly available, reliable, and cyber-secured connectivity.”
Ten years ago, Thales began working on its “cockpit of the future” concept, which should be fielded in helicopters by 2027. One of the results of this research is the FlytX large-display system “designed to reduce training, optimize workload, and increase safety” and display “only relevant and necessary information…when needed.” Although touchscreen control is at the heart of FlytX, airframers can opt to include cursor-control devices and keyboards.
Another tool that Thales has developed is PureFlyt, a connected FMS that is linked to non-avionics systems such as electronic flight bags and operational control centers and that can take advantage of real-time weather information, helping pilots optimize the flight trajectory.
Although fly-by-wire flight controls have predominately featured in larger aircraft, Thales is pursuing opportunities to apply this technology to smaller aircraft, specifically urban air mobility and electric aircraft. “We are convinced that fly-by-wire is an asset for aircraft safety, performance, and comfort,” he said. In larger aircraft, he added, “by protecting the aircraft from high loads, fly-by-wire…allowed the aircraft designers to reduce the aircraft structural weight, providing for fuel savings and much longer range.”
Thales has been manufacturing fly-by-wire components, specifically flight control computers, for Gulfstream large-cabin jets since the G650, with the latest the G700.
As more aircraft adopt fly-by-wire controls, Duval-Destin said, “These capabilities will allow aircraft manufacturers [to introduce] new functions—and they do—to expand the capabilities and safety of their aircraft.”
Garmin
Garmin has been incrementally adding helpful new features, not only to its integrated avionics systems but also to individual products, and many of the features come under the company’s Autonomi umbrella. Autonomi was created after Garmin’s family of flight control assistance products came about, and since then more capabilities have been added. This includes electronic stability and protection (ESP) in autopilots, emergency descent mode for business jets, Autoland for single-pilot airplanes, Smart Rudder Bias to help with engine failure in multiengine airplanes, and Smart Glide to guide airplanes automatically to a suitable airport in case of engine failure.
In fact, Autoland was basically a culmination of previous technologies. “It was all of them working together,” said Dan Lind, senior director, aviation sales and marketing. “ESP could activate emergency descent mode, which could turn into activating Autoland.” ESP itself evolved from its introduction in Cirrus SR single-engine airplanes in 2008, adding overspeed, underspeed, and coupled go-around capability. “It expanded into its own little suite of technology that’s enhanced safety overall,” he said.
“There hasn’t been an inflight loss-of-control accident in Cirruses equipped with ESP,” said Phil Straub, Garmin's executive v-p and managing director for aviation. “A lot of people came back to their loved ones because of this.”
The ESP capability isn’t just available in Garmin’s integrated flight decks but also in its lowest-cost autopilot, the GFC 500. The benefits are thus available for any aircraft that can be certified for installation of the GFC 500, including a Cessna 195 that was the latest undergoing the STC process at Garmin’s Olathe, Kansas hangar in November. “These airplanes made in the 1950s will have ESP and these types of protections in them,” Straub said.
Avidyne
“Both at the OEM and retrofit level, flight controls are going to be where a lot of the action is,” said Dan Schwinn, Avidyne president and CEO. Tens of thousands of aircraft have old autopilots that are either poorly integrated with avionics or unrepairable. "People are looking for what’s next,” he said. The current general aviation autopilots, he added, are the baseline technology, and we should expect to see development progress from that baseline.
Avidyne is also working with AAM companies on integrated avionics systems and AI incorporated into avionics in new electric aircraft.
These technologies aren’t just for technology’s sake but all aimed at improving safety and utility and making pilots more comfortable with their skills. “There's so many benefits,” he explained. “There's the safety one when you're in unfortunate conditions, or if you happen to be a little bit rusty. There’s the ability to have very safe personal minimums that are a little bit more aggressive based on having really good systems on board. [This] means you can use your airplane more, which means you just increase the utility [of your airplane].”
This will be a natural transition, Schwinn said, because people are getting more used to automobile features such as lane assist and automatic braking, “all this kind of stuff that is becoming more and more mainstream, and people are saying, ‘what's the flying equivalent of these driver assistance systems?’
“Technology has enabled a far wider variety of possible solutions. The first go-around of integrated flight decks in the 2000s was a huge step forward from mechanical instrumentation. The next generation is going to put way more useful stuff on those screens and hopefully not in a way that is more difficult to use. Now I think the next 10 years is going to be way way more innovation, plenty in avionics.”
Genesys Aerosystems
Genesys Aerosystems, a Moog company, sees key avionics developments in the modularity of systems, artificial intelligence integration, and immersive cockpits with larger displays, virtual copilots, and other advanced technologies, according to senior marketing manager Edward Popek. “As software and processing power continue to improve, it’s a natural migration to flexible platforms tailorable to specific mission needs, AI processing and alerting for pilot actions, and integrating more virtual reality elements in the cockpit to improve situational awareness and mission effectiveness.”
One of Genesys’ primary product lines is autopilots, but it also manufactures flight displays and radios as well as a full avionics suite for fixed- and rotary wing aircraft. Like other avionics manufacturers, Genesys is exploring advanced functionality to help pilots fly safely in various weather conditions. “We imagine further integration of additional features to aid the pilot in emergency situations such as autoland and autothrottle plus autorotation for helicopters,” Popek said. “We also envision additional features to enable single-pilot crewed aircraft in IFR conditions such as hover hold for helicopters and lower minimums accuracy for flight into lower visibility conditions.”
Popek said Genesys sees evolutionary changes instead of radical technologies due to the need for “exhaustive testing and high safety criticality levels to keep flying safe. This means we will see larger displays with more software features and more functionality built into existing avionics.”