With the increasing population density of cities around the world, the construction of urban ground transportation roads is gradually saturated, and the existing urban transportation modes are approaching the limit, the concept of urban air mobility (UAM) came into being, using EVTOL and other aircraft to carry out passenger and freight transportation within and between cities, solve the problem of urban traffic congestion, and improve urban operation efficiency.
As an aircraft, the industrial chain pattern of evtol is similar to that of traditional aircraft, with the upstream chain mainly including batteries, motors, flight controllers, avionics, airframes and other parts, the midstream is the main engine factory, and the downstream is the application operator of various scenarios.
UAM application scenarios require EVTOLs to meet the requirements of high security, large-scale, high density, high intelligence, and high automation. Flight control systems, especially fly-by-wire, are essential systems for new aircraft configurations such as the EVTOL, responsible for the control and execution of the aircraft, while autonomous flight systems are responsible for perception and decision-making, playing a key role in the larger-scale adoption of the EVTOL.
As the first team in China to devote itself to the research and development of eVTOL flight control and autopilot systems, Boundary Intelligent Control is committed to developing flight control and autopilot systems that meet the airworthiness standards of civil aviation, so as to fill the gaps in China's civil aviation airborne software and electronic systems and further enrich the ecology of the civil aviation industry. At this stage, Boundary Intelligent Control has launched redundant flight control, navigation and other products and solutions that meet the requirements of airworthiness and intelligence, and has reached cooperative relations with a number of OEMs.
In this issue of "20 People in Low-altitude Economy", we are honored to invite Mr. Weng Haimin, founder and CEO of Boundary Intelligent Control, to share his insights on the flight control system and autonomous flight, which are key links in the EVTOL chain.
01 R&D: Adhere to airworthiness standards
In November 2020, Boundary Intelligent Control was established in Shenzhen. All more than a dozen members of the founding team are from the core technical backbone of the R&D team led by Weng Haimin in the past ten years before the establishment of the company, and it is an established team focusing on the research and development of flight control systems, with a solid technical background and rich R&D experience. After the establishment of the company, it has absorbed many outstanding talents from overseas aviation companies and other teams engaged in the development of civil aviation passenger aircraft flight control systems in China, and the current R&D team has more than 50 people.
Talking about the reason for the creation of border intelligent control, Weng Haimin said: "It is difficult to find a domestic manufacturer with high-security software and electronic hardware systems that meet civil aviation standards. Aircraft system manufacturers not only need a lot of R&D investment, but also need to be placed in the main engine factory for R&D time. Based on the past project experience and understanding of the global aviation industry, we judged that the development of the flight control system should be started at that time in order to catch up with the market opportunities for the future development of domestic electric aviation. ”
Although we don't know when the customer will arrive, the boundary intelligent control team insists on establishing a research and development system for airworthiness, focusing on airborne systems with a high safety level, and firmly believes that passenger evtol will complete the scientific research stage and enter the airworthiness certification and productization stage, and must need a system leader like them. Weng Haimin believes that the core competitiveness of the flight control system is airworthiness"The development of airworthy software and electronic hardware requires the team to have a full understanding of the technology, and to establish a sound R & D management process and quality management system, so that all software and electronic circuits meet the standards recognized by the bureau, all designs are explainable, and the entire planning, development and verification process is traceable. ”
Another challenge for Weng Haimin was to go through the research phase with early customers. A few years ago, there were only a few domestic EVTOL machine manufacturers, and they were all in the stage of technical solution demonstration. At the beginning, it was difficult for many customers to explain the requirements for flight control and other subsystems, and they needed to work with us for functional safety analysis, calculation or verification, and even jointly iteratively developed the requirements for technical verification machines. ”
In 2021, Vorant, the first customer of Boundary Intelligent Control, was established and established a cooperation with Boundary Intelligent Control. Up to now, Boundary Intelligent Control has become the leading supplier of flight control systems for many OEMs. Weng Haimin said: "It is very difficult for the new company to become the leading supplier of key systems such as flight control, but now the most difficult stage has passed. Before the establishment of the company, the team had many years of experience in evtol flight controller development, which allowed us to obtain the first customer, and the progress and breakthrough made in the cooperation with the first customer allowed us to have the first.
Second, the third customer. It has also been recognized by more customers in the market and has become an important partner of customers, which is the driving force for us to insist. ”
02 Product: Innovative design of flight control system and self-driving system
Boundary Intelligent Control has launched redundant flight control systems, navigation and other products and solutions for airworthiness and intelligence, including R3 flight control system, BN100 integrated navigation system and C3 flight control system. Among them, the C3 flight control system is different from the industrial-grade UAV flight control system, and is only equipped with basic functions such as inner and outer ring control and automatic route of the EVTOL model, which is mainly used to support the test flight of the EVTOL manufacturer in front of the full-scale prototype and the scientific research test flight of other small UAVs.
The R3 flight control system is a redundant computer designed for the needs of 4 to 5 2-ton EVTOL flight control systems, and it is key to provide OEM customers with the evidence package required for airworthiness certification. "Based on our past experience and understanding of aircraft and flight controllers, as well as repeated communication with a number of EVTOL OEM customers, we determined the design requirements for the R3 flight control system," said Weng. We worked with our first three customers from the product definition stage, and their full-scale technical demonstrators were equipped with our systems for ** testing, ground testing and flight validation. "The R3 flight control system is the first flight control system product designed in accordance with airworthiness standards and systems of Boundary Intelligent Control, and the current cooperative models are all EVTOL aircraft with a take-off weight of 2 tons.
The BN100 integrated navigation system is a new lightweight integrated navigation system with multi-source sensors designed by Boundary Intelligent Control to meet the needs of eVTOL lightweight and low cost.
In addition to flight control systems and navigation systems, Boundary Intelligent Control is also committed to developing autonomous driving systems that meet civil aviation airworthiness standards to promote autonomous flight. The autopilot system is not a physical unit, but needs to be completed through the flight management system, flight control system, navigation system and perception system. At present, due to the lightweight and economical characteristics of evtol, there is a trend of integrated design of flight management system and flight control system.
Autonomous flight has now become a common trend in the evtol industry. However, after several years of exploration and development, autonomous driving of cars has not yet been fully realized, so can evtol autonomous flight be realized? In this regard, Weng Haimin said: "The unmanned car system needs to be designed according to the driving behavior and habits of human drivers, because the ground traffic rules and infrastructure are designed according to human drivers. For example, traffic lights are a typical human-driver interaction scenario, but it is very difficult for machines to accurately identify traffic lights in different weather and lighting conditions. Air traffic is more based on airborne equipment, dispatching systems and communication interactions, and from the perspective of the complexity of technical solutions, autonomous flight is smaller than that of ground transportation. However, the challenge of autonomous driving of aircraft lies in how to develop products according to airworthiness requirements, which requires very large R&D investment and very long development time. ”
Unlike flight control systems, the system design of autonomous flight is primarily related to the environment in which the aircraft is located and the flight information and data. At present, Boundary Intelligent Control is carrying out the preliminary work of the development of autonomous flight system - data collection. Boundary Intelligent Control and Eastern General Aviation have reached a cooperation, and the perception and obstacle avoidance system independently developed by Boundary Intelligent Control will be carried on the passenger transportation of Eastern General Aviation for data collection. These real-world flight data will be validated offline** as a basis for the development of algorithms for autonomous flight systems. In the future, the Boundary Intelligent Control Program will load the system on the *** to provide auxiliary information for pilots. At the same time, due to the small number of national and small general aviation aircraft in domestic cities, the border intelligent control plan will load the system on the UAV for verification to collect more actual data and speed up the development of autonomous flight.
03 Future: From evtol aircraft manufacturing to commercial applications
Some people questioned that the current flight density is very small, and the automatic driving system is not just needed, Weng Haimin responded: "In the low-density flight environment, the role of the automatic driving system has not really been played, but how can we gradually increase the flight density in the future?" The first is to improve the capabilities of the airborne system, realize the intelligence of a single machine and the intelligence of air traffic control, and then establish a comprehensive system of air automatic driving according to the actual situation, of which the intelligence of a single machine is the entry direction of our automatic driving system. ”
In fact, the current eVTOL industry in China is still in the stage of how to solve the airworthiness certification and productization of a single aircraft, and it will take longer for high-density and large-scale commercial operations.
Regarding the gap between the eVTOL industry at home and abroad, Weng Haimin shared, "A few months ago, I met with foreign friends who came to China again after three years at a forum, and I asked them what is the difference between the eVTOL companies they hear in China now and three years ago. They said that at the forum, everyone had not yet figured out how to develop airworthy aircraft, thinking that they could take shortcuts, but now the understanding of airworthiness has been relatively in place. However, leading foreign enterprises have been able to stand in the position of the whole machine factory to jointly promote the development of the industry, and there are no domestic enterprises that put themselves in the industrial chain to think about the construction of upstream businessmen, downstream operators, infrastructure and air management systems. From the perspective of the industry as a whole, the gap between us and foreign countries is still quite large. ”
Facing the future, Weng Haimin believes that in addition to promoting aircraft manufacturing and airworthiness certification, EVTOL should also take the lead in promoting industrial development, including aircraft application scenarios and commercial operations"Aircraft must not only fly well and steadily, but also be able to be accepted and applied by the market, so that the industry can have better development. Many companies may be able to build an airplane, but it is extremely difficult to achieve commercial success, after all, there are very few truly large and profitable airlines in the world. ”
As the leading manufacturer of evtol airborne systems, Boundary Intelligent Control will continue to cooperate with OEMs to promote evtol airworthiness certification, productization and commercial application, and continue to invest in research and development to achieve higher intelligence and lower cost flight control and other airborne systems, and expand the upstream and downstream of the industry, and promote the development of other airborne systems"In general, we will continue to work with our customers to build and operate the aircraft. ”
In order to promote the rapid development of the low-altitude economy, Yiou will organize the "Low-altitude Economy High-quality Development Conference" in Shenzhen on March 29, and release it at the same time.