2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

Airbus has completed two years of flight testing for its Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off, and Landing (ATTOL) project. The work culminated in a fully automatic, vision-based flight of an A350-1000 widebody airliner, achieved through the use of on-board image recognition technology, which the manufacturer described as a world-first in a June 29 press statement.
More than 500 test flights were made as part of the project and around 450 of these were used to gather the raw video data that Airbus engineers needed to support and fine-tune the algorithms for the autonomous technology. There were six test flights to evaluate the autonomous flight capabilities, with each one including five takeoffs and landings in the airliner.
Under the direction of the Airbus UpNext team, ATTOL tapped technical expertise from several Airbus divisions, including Acubed’s Project Wayfinder team which developed the Vahana eVTOL technology demonstrator, as well as Airbus Defence and Space, and Airbus China. French national aerospace laboratory Onera was also involved in the work.
According to Airbus, ATTOL was conceived to explore how autonomous technologies, including the use of machine learning algorithms and automated tools for data labeling, processing, and model generation could help pilots to focus more on strategic decision making and mission management during flights, rather than on aircraft operations. The goal is to boost the operational safety of existing airliners, but also potentially allow for autonomous flights by new generation eVTOL urban air mobility aircraft.
“Many aircraft are already able to land automatically,” explained ATTOL project lead Sebastien Giuliano. “But they’re reliant on external infrastructure like instrument landing systems or GPS signals. ATTOL aims to make this possible solely using on-board technology to maximize efficiency and to reduce infrastructure cost.”
Acubed’s Wayfinder team developed the software that, based on computer vision and machine learning, allows an aircraft to detect its surrounding environment and calculate how best to navigate within it. This is achieved using a combination of sensors, including cameras, radar, laser-based LiDAR, and powerful onboard computers.
“The key challenge for self-piloting capabilities is how the system reacts to unforeseen events,” said Wayfinder project executive Arne Stoschek. “That’s the big jump from automated to autonomous.”

Production Manager

Martha Jercinovich

Airbus Demonstrates Autonomous Flight with ATTOL Project

Airbus says it will continue developing its plans to build eVTOL aircraft for urban air mobility applications, despite the recent cancellation of its joint E-Fan X hybrid-electric aircraft program with Rolls-Royce. Flight testing of the CityAirbus multicopter is set to resume at the Airbus Helicopter facilities at Manching in southern Germany as soon as Covid-19 lockdown restrictions permit, a company spokesman confirmed on May 5.
The two-seat CityAirbus made its first untethered flight in late 2019. Like the earlier single-seat Vahana tiltwing eVTOL, it is intended as a technology demonstrator to provide data that will inform Airbus’s eventual plans to develop a production aircraft.
In late April, Airbus and aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce announced that they are ending development work on the E-Fan X technology demonstrator, which was based on a BAE 146 regional airliner. The project was launched in 2017 as part of a long-term effort to develop a hybrid electric commercial aircraft, starting with the replacement of one of the 146’s four turbofan engines with a 2MW electric motor.
For the E-Fan X project, Rolls-Royce developed a hybrid-electric power generation system built around one of its AE2100 gas turbines driving a 2.5MW generator and a 3,000V power electronics and electric propulsion unit. According to the UK-based group’s chief technology officer, Paul Stein, this represented the largest-scale hybrid-electric propulsion system yet developed for an aircraft. 
Announcing a 49 percent decline in operating profit and a 15 percent dip in revenues for the first quarter of 2020 on April 29, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury made a point of saying that the decarbonization of aviation remains a key research and development priority for the European group. Meanwhile, Airbus is reducing capital expenditure for this year by around $761 million.
Airbus has previously indicated that flight testing of the CityAirbus would likely be complete by the end of 2020, although this timeline may now have to be pushed back because of delays associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. The company has not published a timeline for developing its first production eVTOL model, but it appears to view this as a longer-term project that may well run through to the second half of the current decade.

Airbus Commits to eVTOL Development Despite Ending Work on E-Fan X Hybrid-Electric Aircraft

Airbus-backed helicopter charter service Voom ceased operations on March 30. Confirming the decision in a blog post, Voom CEO Clément Monnet said Airbus decided not to resume services that had been suspended on March 23 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Voom launched its on-demand, per-seat booking service&nbsp;in 2017 in São Paulo, Brazil, and later expanded it to Mexico City and the San Francisco area. The company used a network of operators to provide the flights, which could be booked via an app or online up to an hour before departure.
According to Monnet, Voom has provided Airbus with extensive data about consumer preferences and behavior that will support the wider plans of its Silicon Valley-based A3 division to develop urban air mobility services using eVTOL aircraft. He also hailed what he said was the first mobile helicopter booking platform in a market that now includes competitors Uber Copter and Blade.
Nearly 150,000 people signed up for the Voom app, and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general-aviation/2019-09-26/voom-offer-seat-helo-service-san-francisco-area">service flew</a>&nbsp;more than 15,000 passengers. In its first year of operation, 60 percent of customers were making their first flight in a helicopter. Monnet claimed that the service achieved a 45 percent repeat-customer rate and that the average price for a ride was around double the cost of private car service&nbsp;but 10 times faster.

Airbus

News

Airbus Demonstrates Autonomous Flight with ATTOL Project

Airbus Commits to eVTOL Development Despite Ending Work on E-Fan X Hybrid-Electric Aircraft

Covid-19 Prompts Airbus to Close Voom Helicopter Rideshare Program

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN