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Collins Aerospace, Intel Collaborating on Virtual Pilot for Perigon Flight Control Computer

Could the new Perigon flight control computer help enable single pilot operations one day?

Aircraft OEMs are increasingly pushing avionics providers to develop flight control technology that would enable single-pilot operations for a wide range of aircraft from military helicopters to commercial airliners, according to Collins Aerospace engineers working on bringing a “virtual pilot” to market by the end of this decade.

Collins unveiled its Perigon next-generation flight control concept at the 2018 Farnborough Airshow. Company officials say they now have made a breakthrough that gives them confidence the Perigon system will operate at a high level–a partnership with Intel, announced in April, to incorporate the Silicon Valley technology giant’s Atom x6400E multi-core processor into the Perigon system.

Collins is embedding Intel’s Atom x6400E multi-core processor into its Perigon flight control computer.Collins Aerospace

“OEMs and airlines are heading towards single-pilot operations,” Steve Avritch, a Collins senior technical fellow and the lead engineer on the Perigon program, told Avionics International. “The amount of horsepower required in these computing systems is going up by orders of magnitude. You just can’t get enough processing capability out of the prior generation of single-core processors, so now we’re going with multi-core processors … The features that are going to be in these new flight control systems are advancing rapidly, all the way to full autonomy, and the horsepower required to implement those functions needs to keep pace.”

The Atom x6400E “delivers some of the highest processing per watt power of any processor on the market today, but more specifically we’ve enabled a set of features that are targeted for industrial avionics applications,” Tony Franklin, GM of Intel’s Federal and Aerospace Division said in an interview. “As the computing demands accelerate, we thought both industries needed to come together in a much more structured way to enable adoption of these types of highly complex processors.”

Indeed, going from a single processor to a multi-core processor–specifically, four cores in a single chip–will give Collins the ability to increase processing power by 20 times over the company’s existing flight control computers. “The challenge with that is certification authorities. You have multiple processors inside a single chip sharing resources,” Avritch said. “You have to prove that all the functions inside the device are working well together and not interfering with each other.”

Collins expects an increase in processing power by 20 times over the company’s existing flight control computers for the new Perigon computer. Collins Aerospace

That means Collins has to have much more visibility into the Atom x6400E than it has had with processors in prior generations of Collins’ flight control systems. “This is the first time in my career that we’ve actually had in-depth discussions with a chip vendor,” Avritch said. “Normally, we go through data sheets and just choose the part … For the past 30 years of safety critical flight controls, we did not have to get into the detailed innards of the processing chip, so we really wouldn’t have conversations with the chip makers beyond their data sheets.”

But now, he added: “You have to have a very close collaboration so that we, the user of the chip, can understand exactly how the chip works. Not just the instructions function, but how data is shared within the part, how the different functions within the part all operate in unison at the same time. So, we need a much deeper knowledge of the inner workings of the part than we’ve ever needed in the past.”

The Perigon system is slated to be on the DEFIANT X US Army helicopter being developed by Boeing and Sikorsky, expected to enter operations in 2028. That is currently the only application for which the system has been chosen, but Collins executives indicated additional announcements of aircraft programs planning to use the Perigon system will come later this year, including a fixed-wing aircraft.

Collins plans to certify the system as part of an OEM’s certification of an aircraft rather than individually–it will not be available off the shelf. Collins executives said the Perigon system will be too complicated to not be fully integrated into an aircraft.

“This is going to be part of an integrated system in a whole aircraft and the aircraft will receive a type certificate, which [Perigon] will be a part of,” Avritch said.

Darryl Woods, Collins’ GM for airframe and engine systems and the senior manager of the Perigon program, said that–with a 2028 service entry time frame in mind–development will accelerate.

“We are in the process of building our development test unit to put it into the lab and into our certification/qualification program,” he explained. “Within the next few months, we’ll have hardware and we’ll start the testing.”

Collins opened this Army Customer Experience Center in Huntsville, Alabama to demonstrate the use of Perigon and other future-facing airborne military applications. Collins Aerospace

While the initial application will be for military rotorcraft, Collins is targeting all aircraft types, and said its system will work well for airlines. Initially, Avritch said, the system will be a “third pilot” on commercial aircraft. But as the Perigon system is proven, Collins believes it will eventually replace the co-pilot.

“We're effectively taking the place of that second pilot,” he said. “All that decision making, all of that autonomy, has to be done by the flight control system. You’re coming in to land and the primary pilot is disabled for whatever reason–the automated system takes over. There’s something on the runway or there’s weather out there. These need to be smart systems, which think and analyze like a pilot does and make decisions on the fly.”

Avritch emphasized that the Perigon system will be a radical advancement over current autopilot systems. “This system has to be able to recognize the single pilot is disabled and then make smart decisions about fuel and weather, where it’s going to land, and communicate appropriately with air traffic control,” he said. “This system will fly the aircraft over the entire mission. With an autopilot, generally you just program in way points. The autopilot does not look at weather. It does not look at any obstacles in the way. The autopilot just runs a pre-programed path. This system will have information coming from a variety of different sources that the pilot would normally have and then it will make the decisions, as opposed to a pilot getting all that information and then reprogramming the autopilot.”

Collins expects that, after military helicopters, cargo airlines will most likely be next to use the Perigon system. “There are airlines and cargo carriers that really want to go down to single-pilot operations,” Avritch said. “It’s going to be an evolution. The commercial industry will probably start with cargo. When there’s not 100 or 200 people in the back of the aircraft, the certification authorities will be able to stretch out a little.”