Tomasz Krysinski, head of research and innovation at Airbus Helicopters, has provided more details about the company’s groundbreaking single stick control system, recently tested on the manufacturer’s FlightLab demonstrator.
Dubbed the “Millennium stick” by Airbus engineers, the system replaces the three conventional pilot controls — cyclic, collective and pedals — with a single stick that can be operated with one hand.
The idea is to allow for a simplification of piloting and control of all aircraft axes. With the single Millennium stick, pilots can perform all required maneuvers — from takeoffs, climbs and accelerations, to decelerations, turns, descents and landings.
Krysinski described the stick as allowing “control by objective.”
“You fix the objective: If you want to go forwards, the computer . . . adds on all the controls the appropriate inputs to go forward [while maintaining straight and level flight],” he told Vertical. “If you want to go up, it’s exactly the same. It makes the control of the aircraft much easier.”
A close-up view of the controller has not been provided by Airbus, and Krysinski would not go into specifics as to how it looks, but said “it’s been done very naturally.”
He said many pilots within Airbus have had the opportunity to test the system out during trials, providing crucial feedback as to how they felt using the Millenium stick both in terms of comfort and ease of use.
“What we noticed is that pilots get familiar with it very, very easily,” said Krysinski.
In addition to simplifying piloting, the Millennium stick also takes up less room in the cockpit, resulting in the added benefit of improved visibility.
The test system in FlightLab used electric actuators to pull the flight controls of the modified H130. In case of any issue, a safety pilot in the aircraft had the ability to switch to a traditional flight control system with the push of a button.
The system is reliant on information gathered by the suite of sensors FlightLab carries, including a gyro-stablized camera for image detection (known as the eye for autonomous guidance and landing extension, or EAGLE), and two lidars.
“Helicopters, for years, were very focused on the vehicle,” said Krysinski. “The pilot has all the information about what is going on with the engines, avionics and the [aircraft’s] position. Now, the focus with this new generation of sensors — the lidars, radars, cameras, [and] numerical maps — is what is going on outside.”
Regarding the future use of the technology, Krysinski said its development has mainly been driven by the company’s need for a simplified control system for its urban air mobility efforts (currently focused on the CityAirbus NextGen demonstrator).
As to whether future “traditional” rotorcraft could see a new control interface, Krysinski said the Millennium stick was simply one of several “technobricks” in development — and its uptake depends on the appetite of the company’s program teams, which in turn is informed by market considerations.
The trails of the Millennium stick were followed by tests of Airbus’s Vertex autonomy system, which saw pilots controlling the aircraft with a tablet. With the tablet, pilots simply need to input where they want to go and tap their approval for different phases of flight. They can leave the aircraft to manage the rest, from takeoff to landing — or adjust various paramenters, such as speed, altitude, or route. The aircraft will accommodate these as long as it is safe to do so.
“Also, if you have for instance some kind of a failure — whatever it is — the system automatically shows to the pilot their landing area and the aircraft lands automatically in this area, taking the appropriate trajectory,” said Krysinski.
During the tests, Airbus has had the chance to put a sense-and-avoid function through its paces. This system works by automatically detecting obstacles using the aircraft’s lidars and a map database.
“It’s experimental, of course, but really we did it deliberately to open new mission capabilities,” said Krysinski. “We will not replace the pilot — that’s not the target. The target is to make the pilot focus really on the mission and replace effort to make piloting the aircraft easier.”
