Airbus Defence and Space will be using Ansys SCADE tools to help develop future UAVs
Just days after Ansys hooked up with BMW to simulate autonomous vehicle technologies, it’s back at it with aerospace giants Airbus for enabling safety-critical flight controls with sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Aiming at autonomous flight by 2030, the partnership with Airbus Defence and Space will build on an existing project where Ansys software is being used to develop an advanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicle that will be engineered for speed, safety and affordability.
The partnership between Airbus and Ansys will engineer an advanced Ansys SCADE tool that links traditional model-based software development with new AI-based development flow, which is described as ‘pivotal’ for driving the development, certification and embedding of the drone flight control software, accelerating its speed to market by significantly reducing development time and associated expenses.
SCADE Suite is used to design critical software, such as flight control and engine control systems, landing gear systems, automatic pilots, power and fuel management systems, cockpit displays and many other aerospace, railway, energy, automotive and industrial applications.
Developing these platforms creates a huge engineering challenge as advanced, safety-critical, AI-driven flight control software will be required to perform highly sophisticated decision making with unprecedented speed and accuracy.
Sabine Klauke, head of engineering at Airbus Defence and Space, said: “Ansys SCADE will be invaluable for designing and certifying our software, significantly reducing expense, dropping the number of costly manual activities and potentially cutting development time by 50 per cent — delivering a critical competitive advantage.”
Eric Bantegnie, VP and GM at Ansys, chipped in: “Our collaboration radically upgrades drone capabilities and raises the bar for creating revolutionary, AI-driven flight control software across the aviation industry.”
