The expanding world of UNIVERSAL AVIONICS

Story by – Dale Smith

Source:Avionics News z Avionics News, May 2021

2021 marks the 40-year anniversary of Universal Avionics continuing to uphold its commitment to provide innovative solutions that help private, business, and commercial airplane and helicopter pilots fly better, smarter, and safer.

Welcome to another episode of “Name that Avionics OEM.” Today’s question is: What avionics original equipment manufacturer was the first to introduce the “modern” flight management system, synthetic vision displays, and localizer performance with vertical guidance approach capabilities to business aviation aircraft?

Time’s up. If your answer was Universal Avionics, congratulations! You truly know your avionics OEMs. All fun and games aside, since its inception in 1981, Universal Avionics has been at the forefront of many significant avionics systems innovations. But, alas, the minds behind these industry -leading innovations were much more concerned with helping pilots than marking dates in history.

“The company was founded in 1981 by Hubert Naimer and has a long and significant legacy within the aviation industry,” explained Dror Yahav, chief executive officer for Universal Avionics. “He was an extremely innovative thinker.

Looking into the future, he had a prophecy of how the flight management market would evolve. “We were the first ones to do many significant things in aviation: FMS, synthetic vision and LPV approaches, among other things. I think things slowed down a bit after Hubert passed away. Elbit Systems acquired Universal Avionics about three years ago, and one of the benefits was that we were able to reinject a lot of new technologies from other segments into the current Universal Avionics portfolio.”

A ClearVision of the future

“If you look at the company now, it’s a completely different organization,” Yahav said proudly.

“It’s different because we now have an array of products that are truly unique in the market. That’s very rare in the aviation industry.” One of the differen tiators Yahav discussed was that he majority of the company’s new generation products are connected to its ClearVision enhanced flight vision system, which is itself going through a significant level of accelerated innovation and development. “All in all, we are investing heavily in R&D right now – even during the COVID-19 pandemic – we look at our competition and see they are actually slowing down,” he said. “We’ve decided to use this to widen the gap between their products and ours even further.“It’s all very exciting, but equally challenging. We have a number of new product, certifications in the works now for Boeing 737s, Airbus A320s, Gulfstreams, and large helicopters. We also have fantastic OEM programs in the works. One is with Aerion for our ClearVision enhanced fight vision system for their A2 supersonic business aircraft.”

Aerion is definitely going to be the benchmark for everything in business aviation soon. And while the airplane will introduce some amazing technological innovations, its designers are facing some of the same challenges that hounded the legendary Concord – namely, that long nose.

In the Concord’s case, the prodigious proboscis made forward visibility duringtakeoff and landing virtually nonexistent. To solve it, the designers developed the aircraft’s elaborate droop nose system. It was a face only a mother could love.

Yahav said that thanks to Universal Avionics’ technologies, Aerion A2’s designers won’t have to deal with a costly and complex mechanical solution like Concord’s.

“With our ClearVision and the headwearable unit, we can eliminate that need,” he said. “We can display information like the pilot is looking right through the nose and out the sides of the air-craft on the head unit. There will be challenges, but Aerion is innovative, and we are innovative. It’s a very good mix.”

While having a forward-thinking company like Aerion select Universal Avionics to supply its EFVS, and the SkyLens headwearable display for the supersonic A2 is a major feather in the company’s cap, Yahav said it’s only one of three “emerging technologies” that the company is using as the foundation for its future plans. He further explained that along with the head - wearable display, the other two technologies are enhanced vision and its new i-FMS, or interactive FMS technology – more on them both in a bit.

Heads up: Universal’s head-wearable displays are headed your way!

“People look at our head-wearable display and think it’s a head-up display you wear,” Yahav said. “Well, it’s not – it’s actually much more. It doesn’t just present the HUD symbology. Our new HWD leverages the fact that we can present a lot of other information that the pilot needs on our display. We provide panoramic synthetic vision as well as other graphical information. Again, it’s very unusual and innovative.

“It’s also an enabler to ‘communicate’ with the rest of our newgeneration avionics. For example, when the system knows what you are looking at, it can actually command and control the Universal Avionics flight management system. The system can also sense where you want to go and automatically redirect the avionics to that location.” Universal Avionics’ Fly By Sight flight deck concept was introduced at the 2019 National Business Aviation Association Convention. According to the company, Fly By Sight reduces head-down time in highworkload environments by enabling the pilot to conduct critical functions like heading changes, a runway change, or vectorto-final via head-up technologies instead of relying on looking down at conventional displays.

“I was a commercial pilot, and we used to fly without looking outside; I believe this is not the way people should fly,” Yahav explained. “Our philosophy is that pilots need to fly while looking outside the aircraft – in all conditions. We need to provide them with valuable information like synthetic vision and/or enhanced vision, and airport and navigational information right in their forward field of view.” Anyone who has ever flown with a HUD will attest that it’s a fantastic addition, and adding enhanced vision kicks it up a few more notches on the safety scale. The problem is that HUD is expensive and difficult – if not impossible – to add to a lot of legacy cockpits. Ease of installation is yet another significant advantage for Universal Avionics’ SkyLens HWD system. “Many flight decks cannot accommodate a traditional HUD system due to the space restrictions and cost,” Yahav stated. “Our InSight display system with the SkyLens head-wearable display provides an affordable retrofit path to thousands of operators, which will improve the reliability, safety, and situational awareness during all phases of ground and air operations.

Enhanced vision may be No. 2, but it’s anything but second-best

Like head-up display technology, enhanced vision is an incredible tool for improved situational awareness in lowvisibility situations. Like many of its other innovations, Universal Avionics is working hard to make a great technology better. As Yahav explained, the company’s next-generation enhanced vision system will borrow video content analysis capabilities from the automotive industry and bring those benefits into the cockpit.

“While you can look at our current enhanced vision displays and see a lot more than you can with your naked eye, we’re taking inspiration from the newest trends in the automotive industry to identify objects, people, vehicles and obstacles,” he said. “Obviously, it’s much more challenging in the aerospace market, but based on our enhanced vision system, we are well along in developing a system that not only sees better than the pilot but can automatically provide guidance and alerts based on that information.”

The future of integrated flight management systems

The third emerging product that Yahav discussed is the company’s new-generation interactive flight management system, or i-FMS. “Since our beginning, we have delivered over 40,000 flight management system LRUs, making it the leader in many platforms,” Yahav explained. “We have taken that foundation and redesigned our FMS to become a software based system.

We have a launch customer for the product, and once it’s certified, we can put it practically anywhere.” According to the company, the i-FMS is a flexible and open-architecture system that can be hosted on a variety of current hardware platforms. It enables new concepts in humanmachine interface such as augmenting head-down displays with ClearVision head-up displays, and head-wearable displays allowing pilots to fly by sight. In addition, the i-FMS tackles one of the main challenges pilots face today with FMS operations; the need to manually enter changes to the FMS during critical phases of flight such as takeoff and landing.

Typically, during this time, pilots are required to shift their attention from outside the cockpit window to the FMS display unit – to reprogram the FMS and validate that changes are correct – requiring last-minute updates and significant head down operations. The i-FMS allows pilots to project waypoints and information from the FMS onto the real world, superimposed on UA’s HUD or SkyLens HWD. “Because this is a sophisticated piece of software, it will ultimately interact with existing systems with no need to rewire the airplane or change components,” Yahav said. “The entire i-FMS activity can be very well integrated with a variety of different platforms.”

Universal Avionics’ GIII

Not surprisingly, when it came time to pick the ideal aircraft to act both as a certification mule and a flying demonstrator, the company’s choice was the venerable Gulfstream GIII. “We chose the Gulfstream GIII because it offered both a large cabin and it was the last of its type to still have federated avionics and systems,” Yahav said. “The GIV had a fullyintegrated flight deck. The federated cockpit allowed us to keep the original autopilot and other systems, but it’s still upgradable in terms of its displays and other avionics.” According to the company, the

Gulfstream’s cockpit features the latest in Universal Avionics systems, inclu-ding its interactive human machine interface technologies for enhanced head-up/head-down coordination. It also has Universal Avionics’ InSight integrated flight deck solution with EFI-1040 displays, featuring the company’s new interactive synthetic vision system. Complementing the new flight deck displays is the new i-FMS, the ClearVision EFVS, EVS- 5000 enhanced vision system camera, and SkyLens HWD.

“The InSight display system upgrade is an excellent choice for high-end platforms thanks to its flexibility to work with installed systems that are still viable,” Yahav said. “Operators do not need to perform a complete rip and tear of their cockpit in order to gain the best-in-class capabilities such as data communication and enhanced situational awareness. “Along with the federated cockpit, we also wanted the large cabin and long-range capabilities that the GIII offered. In addition to demonstrating all of our equipment, the GIII’s size and range let us easily accommodate our passengers and make long trips at high altitudes.”

Universal Avionics HWD for helicopters

While he was on the subject of the relative ease of which operators can now add all the various features and functions of Universal Avionics’ head-wearable display to more aircraft types, Yahav stressed the many advantages this technology brings to helicopters. “I’m not a helicopter pilot, but my observation is that many helicopter pilots are doing the most dangerous missions, and the equipment they are using is minimal,” Yahav said. “It’s lacking to a point where it’s almost unfair to them. When you are flying EMS (emergency medical services) or SAR (search and rescue) in a helicopter, you don’t know where you’re landing, and you usually have wires, terrain, and obstacles all around you. It’s very stressful and dangerous.

“What we offer this market in our head-wearable display is a very affordable and proven solution that can be installed on most EMS helicopters. It’s kind of baseline technology for the military. When those pilots leave the military and enter the commercial market, they can’t understand how they’re expected to fly these missions without this kind of equipment.

We understand that, and we have added our EVS-4000 multispectral camera that can switch night into day for those pilots. “The demand in the market is there; we’re working hard to bring our HWD to more helicopters right now. With enhanced vision, infrared vision, synthetic vision, and HTAWS (helicopter terrain awareness and warning system), it’s a great safety enhancement for all kinds of helicopter operations, and it’s a big part of our future.”

Better tools for dealers

CWhile it’s clear that Universal Avionics is investing heavily in new products and capabilities, Yahav was quick to point out that the company has also been increasing its efforts to help its dealers and avionics shops do their jobs better. “I think one thing that sets us apart is that we are easy to work with,” he said. “I don’t want to downplay our competitors – they’re very good – but avionics shops know that when they work with us, we are going to go out of our way to support their needs. One of our latest advancements is we can now do our InSight software updates totally remote.

“Regardless of what COVID-19 travel restrictions you are under and what your policy is for accommodating visitors or technical representatives, we can now connect to the aircraft and troubleshoot issues from anywhere.” The company recently completed its first remote InSight display systems software upgrade in a Hawker 800XP business jet located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Remote connection is an unprecedented use of technology that allows us to instantly snyc, troubleshoot, diagnose and configure systems while they remain installed on the aircraft,” he said. “The successful completion of this remote connection presents extensive possibilities for Universal Avionics, its dealers, and end customers. In this case, it saved 10 or more days of aircraft downtime.” Another new remote tool that Universal Avionics has recently brought to the market is its UA Academy, a distancelearning solution.

“We can’t introduce a lot of new technologies into the market without providing state-of-the-art training solutions; that’s what UA Academy is all about,” Yahav said. “Now, every training tool we have is available online so our dealers and customers can access it at any time, and from anywhere they are.”

Not every solution – just the right solution

What sets Universal Avionics apart in an increasingly crowded avionics market? Well, maybe more than you think. “We have a lot of things that really differentiate us from our competition, but it’s not a better touchscreen, a better menu, or a bigger display – it’s our completely different concept of how to do things,” Yahav said. “We often take inspiration by what’s been done in other segments of aviation and other industries.

“A fighter pilot can do everything they need while looking outside of the aircraft. It’s a fundamental difference in doing things. That’s the way we approach things. We’re not going to compete with display sizes or features; we want to deliversignificantly different capabilities – a profound way of flying.”

Universal Avionics is not an “all things to all customers” type of company, and it’s ok with that. In fact, they will tell you upfront that they may not be the best solution to a particular customer’s need, which is truly unique in itself. “If an operator is looking to a complete rip-and-tear panel upgrade solution, we are probably not their best solution,” Yahav said. “However, suppose they want to retain their existing autopilot and federated systems. In that case, we offer excellent products and capabilities and are going to be a very good fit.”