Airbus Helicopters’ twin-engine technology demonstrator PioneerLab has begun testing advanced autonomous flight capabilities that will ultimately enable the aircraft to perform fully automated landings and takeoffs.
The landing and takeoff capability is just one of a number of digital technologies being developed and matured on PioneerLab — a flying laboratory based on the H145 airframe. Through various lidar sensors and cameras located around the aircraft, the aircraft is able to build a digital representation of its environment — similar to that used in modern automobiles. It detects obstacles, recognizes them, and plots a path around them to the desired landing site.
“Up to now, the helicopter is able to hover to the landing spot, which is closely up above the ground, [but] today you cannot land,” Dominik Strobel, PioneerLab project lead, told media during a pre-Verticon briefing at Airbus Helicopters’ facility in Donauworth, Germany.
Sensors in the aircraft’s skids measure contact forces to allow it to understand when it has touched the ground — and where.
“A helicopter, when it touches down, it touches down not always with the same point,” said Johannes Plaum, head of research and technology at Airbus Helicopters Germany. “Obviously we have slope landings, or unprepared fields with stones, or whatever [it might be]. So the helicopter needs to realize that and to feed [the data to] the autopilot.”
Strobel said Airbus “can do a lot of different things with the data. For now, we’re focusing on automatic takeoff and landing.”
Unveiled in 2023, PioneerLab is now flying at a rate of about 50 hours per year.
One of the primary aims with the demonstrator is to achieve a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions compared to a standard H145. This will be reached through a combination of altering the propulsion system (using a hybrid system with one turbine engine and two 250-kilowatt electric motors), and aerodynamic alterations.
To date, the aircraft has been flying with the two thermal Safran Arriel 2E engines used in the H145. For the hybrid demonstration, these will be replaced with a single Pratt & Whitney PW210 derivative linked with two Collins Aerospace 250 kW electric motors.
The team hopes to reach preliminary design review of the hybrid system this year, marking the start of a 12-month installation process. It hopes to begin flight tests of the hybrid system in 2027.
”It’s really something new for us, in terms of integration effort,” said Plaum. “That means thermal management, interaction of thermal power with electrical power, all these sorts of systems that we need to handle here and need to master here. That’s really the challenge, up to the point where we need to display to the pilot when he’s more on electrical power, or more on thermal power. So there are many, many challenges within this modification.”
The electric motor will provide additional power during takeoff and landing, but Airbus is keen to learn where else it may benefit the aircraft during the flight regime.
“We want to develop, or we want to optimize in each flight state, where it makes sense to . . . decrease thermal power and bring more electrical power to [meet] the whole power demand of the helicopter, and vice-versa,” said Plaum.
To begin with, the electric motors will be charged through generators on the ground before flight. A charging function from the thermal engine “might be implemented somewhere in the future,” said Plaum.
The aerodynamic modifications — which could provide up to 10 percent of the fuel saving/emission reduction targeted — are to reduce drag in both forward flight and hover.
“We will focus on the aft of the helicopter rather than the front,” said Plaum, without going into further detail of the potential airframe changes. “But you will see certainly the differences.”
Finally, the PioneerLab team are also using the aircraft as a test bed for the use of bio-based materials. These are sustainable materials that help further decrease the aircraft’s environmental footprint. It has already flown with a bio-based nose cover, and while Airbus is not disclosing the next component targeted for a bio-based replacement, Plaum said it would be somewhere “in the tail area.”
