GE announced today that it has formed a cross-functional partnership with pan-European industrial and academic partners to develop technologies and crew interface standards for the next generation of passenger aircraft.
With airspace projected to become significantly more congested in the coming decades, workload both within the aircraft and on the ground is set to increase. The project, REACTOR, will develop and integrate five key technologies in order to address workload and stress within the cockpit.
Alan Caslavka, president of Avionics for GE Aviation, highlighted GE's commitment. "At GE, we are transforming into a digital industrial company. The way humans interact with machines is at the core of this transformation. Aerospace is leading the way in safety-critical interfaces and displays. Investment in this type of research can bring benefits across many industrial sectors into the 2020s and beyond."
This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No CS2-LPA-GAM-2014-2015-0l. The partnership includes: BAE Systems, providing head worn displays and automation; German Aerospace Center (DLR), airborne aircraft monitoring and ground support and Coventry University, providing human factors design expertise. The project is led by Airbus Defence and Space.
GE will integrate technologies from three of its core businesses across the GE Store; from GE Aviation comes a voice interface first used on Eurofighter, which will be overhauled for the 21st century; from GE Global Research comes crew health monitoring, currently used in hospitals to diagnose health conditions and; from GE Digital comes the Predix platform for secure, historical trend monitoring and prognostics.
By combining these technologies in a modular fashion, customers will be able to maintain control of their design philosophy, while still enjoying all the benefits that they can bring. Voice interface will free the crew from their touchscreens, keyboards and cursors, while health monitoring will enable the aircraft to adapt to the crew's needs - giving more assistance when overloaded, but crucially more authority when the conditions necessitate.
Early prototypes of GE cockpit solutions are due from 2017 and interested customers are invited to participate in its earlier adopter programme, where they can trial and shape their future cockpit technology.
GE Aviation is an operating unit of GE and a world-leading provider of jet engines, components, avionics, digital and integrated systems and navigation services for commercial and military aircraft. GE Aviation has a global service network to support these offerings.