Airbus has signed a trilateral agreement with Thales and Diehl Aerospace for the joint development of the flight control computers of CityAirbus NextGen. The central flight control system of CityAirbus NextGen, the electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOL) being developed by Airbus, will combine extraordinary computing power with lightweight design and highest safety standards.
Diehl and Thales are joining Airbus in investing into the emerging eVTOL market. Both partners are developing their own system that will be integrated into a dissimilar architecture to comply with the new EASA regulation for eVTOL. This architecture is essential to ensuring the redundancy of the computers and the vehicle’s safety. The developments will be supported with public funding from the German and French governments, respectively.
Thales is responsible for the primary computing system, while Diehl is developing the secondary flight control computer. The system ensures that the second, independent flight control computer monitors the data of the primary computer system permanently, and it can also take over the flight control itself.
