Honeywell and Volocopter have signed an agreement to jointly test and develop new navigation and automatic landing systems for the latter’s vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft. Honeywell said it will apply its existing aviation hardware and software products, including navigation technologies and fly-by-wire flight controls, to the test program, as well as the avionics manufacturer's autonomous sensing, inertial measurement units and attitude heading reference solutions, to solve the challenges of UAM flight.

"Alongside Volocopter, we will be building on our fundamental expertise of navigation sensor solutions plus other landing expertise, moving us closer to the reality of urban air mobility," said Carl Esposito, president of electronic solutions for Honeywell Aerospace. "Our global outlook stems from years of working alongside organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Agency. This collaboration has allowed us to explore the challenges, opportunities, and safe integration of technologies and aircraft in civil airspace."

Esposito said avionics solutions to be applied to the Volocopter will build on technologies it developed under Europe's Clean Sky 2 and Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) 2020 industry and government collaboration programs. Volocopter's immediate goal is to fly Honeywell’s inertial measurement-based attitude reference system aboard one of its aircraft this year, it said.