Boom Supersonic unveiled its supersonic demonstrator, XB-1, an independently developed supersonic jet. To design and build XB-1, Boom says it recruited a team of experts from around the industry, forged relationships with key suppliers, and built a strong safety culture. XB-1 is slated to fly for the first time in 2021 and will undergo a 100% carbon-neutral flight test program. Boom’s innovations include developing one of the highest-efficiency civil supersonic engine intakes ever tested, demonstrating Boom’s ability to deliver a breakthrough in propulsive efficiency for Overture, the company’s proposed passenger transport aircraft.
“Boom continues to make progress towards our founding mission—making the world dramatically more accessible,” said Blake Scholl, Boom founder and CEO. “XB-1 is an important milestone towards the development of our commercial airliner, Overture, making sustainable supersonic flight mainstream and fostering human connection.”
After rollout, XB-1 will complete its ongoing, extensive ground test program before heading to Mojave, California in 2021 for flight test. At the same time, the company will finalize Overture’s propulsion system and conduct wind tunnel tests to validate aircraft design. When XB-1 breaks the sound barrier in flight, Boom says it will be finalizing the design of Overture, whose own rollout is on track for 2025.
maxon has collaborated with drone startup Flybotix to develop performance-optimized brushless DC motors for a new kind of inspection drone. With the know-how gained from this and other projects, maxon is making inroads into the new UAV market, where the reliability and quality of components are becoming more important.
Two rotors instead of four was the approach used by startup Flybotix to develop the ASIO inspection drone, which is set to conquer the market. This indoor drone for industrial facilities is built around a patented drive system powered by brushless DC motors from maxon. maxon worked closely with Flybotix to develop electric motors that are optimized for weight and performance and specifically adapted to this application. These drives will allow the ASIO to carry out long missions, reach distant locations, and save costs. “This world-class level of performance could not have been reached without the excellent work of maxon,” said Samir Bouabdallah, CEO of Flybotix. “We are very excited about this partnership and will intensify it in order to advance the industrialization of our drone.”
Flybotix is a Swiss company in the EPFL Innovation Park in Lausanne, which is also home to one of maxon’s innovation labs. CEO and founder Samir Bouabdallah has 15 years of experience in developing drone technology at the EPFL and at ETH Zurich. The drive system he developed with his team is an algorithm- controlled propulsion and steering mechanism with two degrees of freedom. “That gives the drones the aerodynamic performance of a helicopter and the mechanical reliability of a quadcopter.” ASIO is surrounded by a protective cage, is collision-proof, and allows access to tight spaces to carry out inspections safely. An on-board camera, combined with a high-quality display on the remote control, allows pilots to fly safely in hazardous areas such as oil storage tanks, underground mines, or power plants.
The market for unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles (UAV) is new, but very dynamic—many startups like Flybotix are involved, and there are potential applications in areas like inspection, agriculture, security, and transport. Following the industry’s initial ventures and a few setbacks, the safety requirements placed on unmanned aerial vehicles and their components has increased.
In 2019, a number of initial drives were constructed for special projects, with matching ESCs (Electronic Speed Controllers). In the drone market, the motor is not the only thing that matters. What is far more important is the perfect interplay of BLDC motors, motor controllers, and matching propellers. That is the only way to get the most out of the system in terms of thrust and energy efficiency. maxon’s engineers were eager to learn as much as they could from experts like Samir Bouabdallah and to foster information exchange, right from the start. With the experience gained, maxon is ready to support customers in the fast-growing UAV market with customized motors and systems.
Ingenuity, which will take off from the surface of Mars in 2021, is equipped with six maxon DC motors.
Effective immediately, Exact Metrology has become a distributor of the GOM CT scanner in the U.S. The announcement was made by company co-presidents, Steve Young and Dean Solberg. GOM is an established global company and leader in structured light scanning technologies. The company develops, produces and distributes software, machines and systems for industrial and automated 3D coordinate measuring technology, 3D computed tomography, as well as 3D testing based on the latest research results and innovative technologies.
The computed tomography scanner GOM CT provides 3D data of internal and external component geometries in exceptionally high resolution. The GOM CT produces the finest details visible throughout the component, simplifying initial sampling, tool correction and inspection tasks during production. It captures complex components including the “inner workings” in a single scanning process, so that the user receives a complete image of the test specimen for form and position analysis or nominal/actual comparisons. The system shows its greatest strengths when digitizing smaller plastic and light metal parts.
High-contrast X-ray detector and 5-axis kinematics
To achieve a very high level of detail during component digitization, the components of the GOM CT were matched to each other, a high-contrast 3k X-ray detector generates a very fine pixel grid (3008 x 2512 pixels) and thus lays the foundation for high-precision detection of the measured components. 5-axis kinematics with integrated centering table makes it easier for the user to position the component optimally in the measuring volume, so that the measurement is always performed with the best possible resolution. An additional plus, is that within the measuring volume (diameter: 240 mm, height: 400 mm) several objects can be measured simultaneously in one scan, further reducing processing times. Thanks to the proven GOM technology the GOM CT ensures high precision and repeatable measurement results.
Data acquisition and evaluation in one software package
As with all GOM metrology systems, the control of the device, data acquisition and evaluation are combined in a single software package. This means that no further software is required; the chain from recording the raw data to creating the measurement report is greatly simplified.
Exact Metrology will house a GOM CT scanner at their Brookfield, Wisconsin location. Once there, it will be used for customer demonstrations and educational purposes, as well as contract scanning.
Air Transport Services Group (ATSG) announced that its airline subsidiaries ABX Air, Air Transport International (ATI), and Omni Air International (Omni) are implementing a suite of wireless connectivity and data transfer solutions from Teledyne Controls, to further improve the safety, reliability, and efficiency of its airline operations.
As part of a three-fold approach, ATSG’s airlines first initiative was to automate its FOQA (Flight Operational Quality Assurance) process and deploy Teledyne’s GroundLink Comm+ system, a multi communication device and quick access recorder, to record and wirelessly download flight data after every flight. Using the system, the data is automatically transferred to ground stations for immediate processing and analysis, without the need for manual retrieval. This provides consistent and timely access to the data to support incident prevention and safety management, facilitate troubleshooting, and make better maintenance decisions. The GroundLink Comm+ system, which was successfully implemented across Omni’s 767 fleet, is being expanded to the ABX Air and ATI fleets.
Secondly, to further improve the efficiency and dispatch ability of their fleet, the ATSG airlines selected Teledyne’s Loadstar Server Enterprise (LSE), a ground software tool for the configuration, storage and electronic distribution of software parts to individual aircraft, and the enhanced Airborne Data Loader (eADL) that allows software parts to be electronically distributed and loaded onto the aircraft systems. With the eADL connected to the GroundLink® Comm+ system, software parts can be wirelessly transmitted from the LSE ground system directly to the eADL, for loading onto target onboard systems. This facilitates compliance by ensuring that the latest version of software is installed, reduces data loading time, keeps human intervention to a minimum and gives ATSG’s airlines the ability to load their aircraft at multiple hubs, increasing their on-time dispatch performance.
Last, ATSG’s airlines are implementing GroundLink AID+, an add-on solution to the GroundLink Comm+ that provides connectivity for the flight crew and connects commercial tablets and crew devices with existing aircraft onboard data systems. ATSG’s AID+ system is integrated with Jeppesen’s FliteDeck Pro, allowing pilots to quickly and easily access charts and maps on their EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) tablets. GroundLink® AID+ also provides EFB connectivity to the flight deck printer.
“Our subsidiary Omni Air International’s success with Teledyne’s FOQA process and GroundLink Comm+ system made the decision to expand our Teledyne partnership easy,” according to Ed Koharik, chief operating officer of ATSG. “Our continued investment in service improvements demonstrates our commitment to improve our industry-leading performance and exceed customers’ expectations.”
“We appreciate the trust that ATSG has put in Teledyne Controls and we are very happy to be a part of their forward-looking vision,” says George Bobb, president of Teledyne Controls. “The integrated approach ATSG is taking with our GroundLink wireless solutions will deliver significant operational benefits.”
GroundLink Comm+ is a versatile communication system that facilitates and accelerates data exchange between airborne systems and ground-based equipment. It supports multiple applications across an airline’s operations, such as wireless distribution of software parts and databases, automated FOQA downloads, real‑time data streaming, cabin/crew connectivity, ACARS over IP and more. These enhanced capabilities are provided through software upgrades and are approved for use on multiple aircraft types via Teledyne STCs.
After three years of engineering work, Astrobotic’s CubeRover is on its way to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The CubeRover is designed to provide an affordable mobile outlet for scientific instruments and other payloads to operate on the surface of the Moon. This occasion marks the first time Astrobotic’s Planetary Mobility department has delivered rover hardware to an outside entity.
Named for its modular, scalable design, the CubeRover was co-developed with Carnegie Mellon University, with input from a NASA team at Kennedy, and marks the completion of work on NASA’s $750,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 contract to develop a lightweight rover with flight characteristics.
Astrobotic has since refined and commercialized the CubeRover product line with the goal of supporting mobility as a service with a variety of diverse payloads, making lunar access easier for smaller tech demonstrations and scientific investigations. The rover is also designed to be integrated onto multiple lunar landers for voyages to the Moon, facilitating its inclusion on a wide variety of future space missions.
Designing the compact CubeRover presented an array of engineering challenges for the Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon teams. Among many concerns, the teams were tasked with regulating the rover’s temperature in extreme climate fluctuations, keeping its mass minimal, and ensuring the rover maintained optimum mobility for instruments operating on the rover. The teams created a robust thermal design able to endure temperatures ranging from space (-455ºF) to the lunar surface (260ºF). The result is the lightest commercial planetary rover ever created. The CubeRover was also outfitted with a calibrated camera used to orient itself relative to known objects on the lunar surface, such as Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander. The ability for the rover’s operation team to recognize its position on the Moon augments the value of the data, allowing payload customers to make informed decisions about where to travel next.
“Because our CubeRover is so light — in the four kilogram range — it dramatically reduces flight cost, making the Moon more accessible to more customers,“ says Mike Provenzano, Astrobotic’s director of Planetary Mobility. ““We’re also including industry standard interfaces throughout the rover to simplify the payload integration process.”
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