‘Jetsons’ mobility future takes a step closer
Callen-Lenz and Lynx Software Technologies team to accelerate time to market for air mobility, reports Paul Myles.
Personal air mobility has taken a step closer to being a reality with the strategic partnership announced between two of the major players in the UK and the US.
Salisbury based flight control specialist Callen-Lenz and California’s Lynx Software Technologies, have announced an agreement to develop products for the emerging air mobility, personal air vehicle and certified unmanned air system markets.
The move will delight those dreaming of a ‘Jetsons’ age where people will be carried in flying cars and large packages will be delivered by drones over the heads of the public. Developers of both types of vehicle will need to resolve the same technical and social challenges. The electronic systems that control them must be shown to be suitably safe and the public will also demand the capabilities that they now have as standard in their automobiles and consumer devices. Manufacturers will need a solution that costs little and weighs less, while being capable of being updated and modernized without needing to unnecessarily repeat previous expensive safety certification.
LynxSecure Safety Bundle (LSB) and Callen-Lenz’s management systems for unmanned and manned aircraft claim a solution to develop systems that offer critical SWaP-C (size, weight, power and cost) benefits. The system software architecture enables the rapid refresh of co-resident non-safety critical modules without affecting the overall safety certification.
When hosted on LynxSecure, the Callen-Lenz flight control software is claimed to be able to run in its own partition, isolated from non-safety system functions in other partitions. Third party entertainment and communication software systems can be added and modified without affecting the certification of safety critical applications and without requiring the porting of these non-safety-critical applications to a certifiable operating system or partitioning system.
Jonathan Webber, CEO Callen-Lenz, said: “The spectacular recent growth in development of Personal Air Vehicles, Air Mobility solutions and Beyond Visual Line of Sight large unmanned aircraft will require a safe and secure design of avionics suitable for meeting the regulators’ needs whilst maintaining public and user confidence. Consumers will also expect entertainment, navigation and social media experiences similar to those that are commonplace in automobiles. Our avionics solutions provide this by design, and LynxSecure enables us to deliver a fully-integrated future-proof solution that will be the heart and brain of the vehicle now and in the future, whilst meeting the demands of regulators worldwide.”
