SBIR-STTR Award

Avilution's eXtensible Flight System (XFS) is a suite of hardware and software modules that seamlessly integrate avionics components from multiple vendors into a highly agile, cohesive, and resilient unit for use on aerospace vehicles including manned and unmanned aircraft, autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), innovative commercial air-taxi concepts, and training/mission simulators. Avilution proposes to utilize this existing commercial technology to rapidly develop and deploy innovative avionics software solutions for the Air Force that increase the effectiveness of today's warfighters. Avilution has already been in discussions with multiple potential Air Force stakeholders and has received support for this proposal along with an interest in sponsoring this technology's maturation Some of the current capabilities of XFS include configurable flight displays, moving maps, VFR Flight Management System (FMS), transponder, Electronic Circuit Breakers (ECBs), autopilot control panel, environment control, flap and trim control, audio panel integration, navigation/communication radios, GPS RNAV, VOR/ILS, weight and balance, and interactive checklists. These features have been developed using rapid software development practices in conjunction with a relentless focus on minimizing software requirements to create an innovative network topology that allows integrators to rapidly field modern avionics capabilities at a lower overall life cycle cost in comparison to tradition architectures

DoD avionics and mission systems are expensive, vendor-locked, slow in development, and difficult to update to meet evolving requirements. Avilution's eXtensible Flight System (XFS) software provides a modular, open-system architecture for addressing these issues. XFS rapidly integrates existing unmodified avionics products with dissimilar physical busses and different data protocols to create synergistic solutions using lightweight common, reusable software elements. By adapting to new requirements through configuration file changes rather than software rewrites, XFS adapts gracefully to new DoD threats and mission changes, while precluding the rapid obsolescence that burdens many systems. For its Phase II work scope, Avilution will extend XFS's capabilities via trial objectives in three areas designed to meet the identified needs of our AF Customer, AFLCMC/PEO-Mobility and Training Aircraft: 1) XFS avionics software lifecycle management tools to improve Air Force capabilities for releasing, changing, and controlling software versions across multiple fleets. 2) Extending Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) capabilities including more accurate sensor inputs and responsive mission-specific applications. 3) XFS data logging and analysis modules to further Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) efforts. Avilution licenses its XFS source code and any available test artifacts to our commercial and DoD customers, thereby increasing competition and lowering costs to all our customers.