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What Joby’s newly acquired autonomy company brings to the eVTOL developer

By Alex Scerri

Published on: July 19, 2024
Estimated reading time 11 minutes, 42 seconds.

Joby’s acquisition of Xwing’s autonomy division in June enhances the eVTOL developer’s sensor and control knowhow for autonomous aviation.

In Joby Aviation’s own words, the acquisition of Xwing’s autonomy division in June underscores the company’s leadership position as a next-generation aviation company. It complements Joby’s acquisition of Inras GmbH, a company based in Linz, Austria, developing lightweight, high-performance radar sensor technology.

Since its founding in 2016, Xwing has steadily grown into an industry leader in autonomous aviation technology. Although Xwing has a part 135 cargo operation, Joby confirmed that this was not part of the deal, with the latter having received its own part 135 certificate just over two years ago.

Xwing’s Superpilot software has already been used to conduct 250 autonomous, ground supervised flights, logging more than 500 auto-landings to date in a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. Xwing also became the first company to receive an official project designation for the certification of a large unmanned aerial system (UAS) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in April 2023, and the first to receive an Air Force Military Flight Release earlier this year. The company is targeting to certify its autonomous system for civilian use by 2025.

In January and February 2024, Xwing participated in the U.S. Air Force’s Agile Flag 24-1 Joint Force exercise, where its aircraft covered around 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) and landed at eight public and military airports, demonstrating the ability to integrate autonomous aircraft into the national airspace system.

Joby said that any tools that help reduce the burden on pilots through automation will be beneficial for the company’s near-term piloted operations. Joby Photo

Airborne DAA

Xwing is developing a suite of systems, including vision-based systems that can identify other aircraft, landing surfaces, and obstacles. This reduces the overdependence on satellite-based navigation, and helps to augment it when it is operational and available.

Together with electronic conspicuity methods, vision-based sensors and the algorithms used to blend the inputs are indispensable for effective detect and avoid (DAA) systems needed to support autonomous and ground-supervised aviation.

Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt stated that Joby’s first certified aircraft will have a pilot on board. However, a future generation of autonomous aircraft will be needed to unlock the company’s vision for clean and affordable aviation at scale.

In a comment to Vertical, Joby stated that any tools that help reduce the burden on pilots through automation will be beneficial for the company’s near-term piloted operations, as these advancements can enhance pilot efficiency, reduce workload, and streamline flight operations.

Some technologies that will be part of DAA include ACAS Xr, which is an evolution of airborne collision avoidance systems (ACAS) found on nearly all commercial and many general aviation aircraft today.

The system offers improved traffic conflict resolution by using automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data. Unlike the current ACAS II, which only gives vertical avoidance maneuvers, ACAS Xr will also give lateral avoidance maneuver commands.

RTCA steering committee SC-147 and EUROCAE working group WG-75 SG-2 are currently working on establishing the standards for ACAS Xr for rotorcraft and advanced air mobility (AAM) applications. On its website, EUROCAE states that the target publication date for this standard is the end of 2025.

Xwing uses multiple sensors, including radar and optical cameras, to supplement ADS-B data. These inputs help refine traffic conflict resolutions and, crucially, are also indispensable for detecting non-cooperative targets. Some of the research areas could include the performance of these optical systems under various light conditions, susceptibility to glare, and how to handle possible unexpected sensor non-availability due to bird strikes, etc.

Craig Milliard, Xwing flight test manager, monitors an autonomous flight from the Xwing ground control station at McClellan Airfield in Sacramento, California, on Jan. 26, 2024. Xwing’s autonomous flight technology allows its aircraft to taxi, takeoff, fly to a destination, avoid airborne and ground threats, and land, without any human input. U.S. Air Force/Matthew Clouse Photo

Radar detection also has some challenges, such as “ghost targets” from ground clutter, arising from radar returns from objects on the ground or the terrain itself. The trade-off between filtering this nuisance ground clutter while not reducing the detection range or excluding genuine returns is also one of the main lines of research.

The software must also be well-designed to ensure that a target “seen” by the different sensors is not erroneously designated as multiple targets. There is also research in progress to see how to take into account wake turbulence from a potential intruder in the avoidance solution, another consideration in highly complex and dynamic airborne environments.

It is to be seen which solutions Xwing/Joby will adopt. What is almost certain is that they will use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods. This will be continuously augmented and updated with test flight data and eventually, with feedback from real-world commercial operations once the system obtains certification.

Ground DAA

The ground DAA ability is also essential for safe operations. Xwing uses a blend of multiple sensors, including LIDAR, optical cameras, and ADS-B where available from participating aircraft and airport vehicular traffic. This ground DAA capability should detect any obstacle in the aircraft’s path to avoid ground collision.

Although they are not frequently catastrophic as airborne collisions, ground incidents involving ground maneuvering aircraft cost hundreds of millions of dollars to the industry per year, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA) data.

Another important factor is that although installing multiple sensors is one solution to provide redundancy and the possibility of blending different sources, AAM applications must keep the added weight to a minimum and, specifically for battery-powered aircraft, the energy draw must be minimized so as not to impinge on the range and payload capabilities of the vehicle.

Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt stated that Joby’s first certified aircraft will have a pilot on board. However, a future generation of autonomous aircraft will be needed to unlock the company’s vision for clean and affordable aviation at scale. Joby Photo

Revenue opportunities

Certifying these systems on smaller feeder aircraft and eVTOLs could be a potential gateway to having them available for larger commercial aircraft in the coming years. These can become a potentially lucrative source of income in the form of commercializing this intellectual property (IP) to third parties.

Military applications are also a prime source of potential revenue, and Joby has stated that the acquisition of Xwing is expected to accelerate existing and potential future contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Col. Elliott Leigh, AFWERX director and chief commercialization officer for the Department of the Air Force, stated that “autonomous systems are increasingly prolific in the private sector, and bring potentially game-changing advantages to the Air Force as well. We created Autonomy Prime to keep up with this shift and to stay engaged as a partner while this technology evolves, so that we can adapt and evolve along with the private sector, maintaining our competitive advantage.”

It is possible that revenue streams from military contracts can arrive earlier than from commercial operations, as military certification can proceed at a faster pace. The military has several use cases, such as moving cargo in a high-risk environment, without involving a human pilot and crew for the airborne phase.

In cases where high-volume logistics operations would be needed, such as in disaster relief operations, these would not be as limited by flight crew rest requirements where a ground supervisor pilot would be able to monitor multiple flights.

While an essential component for its own current aircraft and future projects, the potential of delivering DAA and control subsystems to external customers will be a welcome business endeavor, as well as hopefully inject funding to continue the development and certification of Joby’s S4 eVTOL and future aircraft.

Gabriele Di Francesco, Xwing safety pilot, prepares for takeoff in N101XW, a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan that flies autonomously, at McClellan Airfield in Sacramento, California, on Jan. 27, 2024. U.S. Air Force/Matthew Clouse Photo

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