GE Aviation has teamed up with Hybrid Project to provide a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAV designed for high-endurance commercial applications at scale. Flight testing will commence in Q4 this year with commercial availability is targeted for Q1 2020.
The agreement Hybrid Project’s 35-pound hybrid-powered SuperVolo VTOL UAV enabled with a full stack airborne computing hardware platform, flight and safety management, and integration from GE Aviation and Auterion. GE Aviation’s computing platform enables flight control and airborne computing power at the edge while maintaining an independent and authoritative safety controller. Auterion’s Enterprise PX4 operating system resides on the vehicle, in the cloud, and the ground station. This integration is the result of an agreement announced earlier this year between GE Aviation and Auterion to provide an all-in-one hardware and software platform for commercial drones.
Hybrid Project’s SuperVolo has been designed from the ground up with an emphasis on endurance flights, ease of maintenance, and being modular. The combined system is comprised of technologies and services which have the capability of enabling commercial operations in complex environments while meeting regulatory requirements and achieving mission outcomes.
