Collins Aerospace Taps Wind River Helix Virtualization Platform to Future-Proof Avionics

April 19, 2019

Andreea Volosincu, Sr. Product Manager, Wind River

Stock Photos from VLADYSLAV DANILIN / Shutterstock

Future airspace will be filled with unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, commercial aircraft, helicopters, and more. Several prototypes are currently targeting urban air mobility (UAM) platforms, such as air taxis, and revolutionary aircraft models like next-generation commercial supersonic aircraft . Add to this autonomous swarm technologies, enabling manned-unmanned teaming, and systems for future vertical lift and it’s clear that the technology wave can easily become overwhelming.

Adopting new capabilities is crucial for maintaining market leadership and ensuring technological superiority, but it needs to be strategically mapped out to ensure overall affordability and minimized risk. This is especially important at the macro level, across programs. The challenge here is designing systems that remain relevant as technology progresses and market needs shift. The main objectives are to write once and reuse many times, upgrade without entirely redesigning the system, and prepare for the future even when it is largely unknown.

The aerospace industry faces unique challenges when it comes to coupling the promise of innovation with the culture of safety developed over many decades. While government regulators remain key for ensuring safety, the applications that the platform can host can be of different levels of certification and criticality.

Visit SAE International's Advanced Manufacturing Knowledge Hub to learn how Collins Aerospace is leveraging virtualization technologies -- including the Wind River Helix™ Virtualization Platform -- that are scalable, support the transition to heterogenous systems, and help aerospace manufacturers evolve business models to support new technology insertions, such as open source-based applications and new proprietary intellectual property (IP), while reusing legacy IP in new safety-critical systems.