The inevitable has happened in the U.S. attempt to move the economy off the planet. That it happened twice in a week is driving a needed element of reality into the endeavor.
A wireless sensor technology can detect damage, measure fuel levels and even potentially redirect lightning strikes to safe areas on an aircraft's exterior.
Three words best describe a suite of new software tools Honeywell is building for its Primus Epic integrated flight decks: seamless situational awareness.
New launch and recovery system is designed to enable a beyond-line-of-sight, multi-intelligence unmanned aircraft, with 10-12-hr. time on station at 500 nm, to be independent of runways and flight decks.
Unmanned developments: “ambulance drone” prototyped; solar-powered, optionally piloted SunStar; Airbus VTOL UAS heads to sea; TaxiBot cleared for service trials; UAS testing expands in Wales.
Senior Editor for Avionics and Safety John Croft visits Honeywell's Flight Deck of the Future (FD-X) Lab to see some of the advanced technologies being developed there, including eye-tracking, gesture- and voice-control modalities for next-gen cockpits.
Universal Avionics is about to certify a new flight deck called InSight that tightens the working relationship between pilot and machine with a blend of higher-resolution 3-D synthetic vision, larger displays and new icon-based command-and-control architecture. The system is the first major integrated cockpit refresh in nearly a decade from the company that first certified synthetic vision for the multifunction display in 2002, light airplanes in 2005 and air transport cockpits in 2006.
New avionics company Genesys Aerosystems, an amalgam of S-Tec and Chelton Flight Systems, is concentrating on special missions needs to make its mark in the Avionics realm
After astronauts install a special 3-D printer in the ISS’s Microgravity Science Glovebox and set up the high-definition video cameras that will watch its extruder and work platform from two different angles, controllers at a small startup company in California will send signals to begin making things in orbit.
The aerial refueling capability will extend the range and persistence of the U.S. Navy’s Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye to at least 7 hr., up from the current 4-6 hr.
Steeped in manned-aircraft experience but with a burgeoning unmanned-aircraft avionics business, Rockwell Collins is working to help UAVs fly in the national airspace system. With NASA, the company is developing a certifiable command-and-control data link allowing multiple unmanned aircraft systems to be flown from a single ground station. And now Rockwell Collins has shown that certified manned-aircraft avionics can be used in a UAS without breaking the certification chain of evidence.
