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Honeywell Creates New Business Unit for Drones and Urban Air Mobility

By Brian Garrett-Glaser | June 15, 2020
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air taxis, eVTOLs, Honeywell, UAS

Honeywell has created a new business unit to provide hardware and software to the drone and urban air mobility industries, an opportunity it believes will represent $120 billion by 2030. (Uber Elevate, design by Corgan)

Honeywell has created a new business unit dedicated to unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and urban air mobility (UAM), the company announced, with dedicated engineering and sales resources, valuing the hardware and software market for such systems at $120 billion by 2030.

“Urban Air Mobility and Unmanned Aerial Systems will play an increasing role in the future of aerospace, with potential applications in all-electric urban air taxi vehicles, hybrid-electric unmanned cargo drones, optionally piloted airplanes, delivery drones and everything in between,” said Mike Madsen, president and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace.Stéphane Fymat, vice president and general manager for the new business unit, said Honeywell expects the hardware and software market for UAM, drone cargo delivery and other drone applications to reach $120 billion by 2030, with Honeywell’s market opportunity about 20 percent of that.

Honeywell UAM will “develop new products and services uniquely for these markets,” according to Honeywell, and act as a systems integrator for existing Honeywell products and services that could be used by the UAS and UAM industries. Offerings will include avionics, electric and hybrid-electric propulsion and thermal management, flight services and ground operations services. The business unit has hundreds of employees with many engineers.

Honeywell's compact fly-by-wire system, developed with air taxis in mind. (Honeywell)

At last year’s Uber Elevate summit, Honeywell unveiled a compact version of its fly-by-wire system for use on air taxis. The company has been selected to provide various sub-systems to a number of air taxi OEMs, including Volocopter, Vertical Aerospace, Jaunt Air Mobility, Pipistrel and Eviation. Honeywell is also pursuing customers in the drone package delivery industry, though it has not yet announced any relationships.

Honyewell also signed an agreement with Denso to collaborate on electric and hybrid powertrains for urban air mobility aircraft.

In November of last year, Honeywell partnered with and invested in Swiss autonomy startup Daedalean.ai, with Honeywell Ventures contributing an undisclosed sum to the startup’s $12 million fundraising to date. Honeywell will work with Daedalean to procure the flight testing and data necessary for the company’s rapid development and certification of flight control software, and provide its autopilot solutions for both general aviation and electric vertical takeoff and landing airframes.

“We're not trying to bet on who's going to have the best drone,” said Murray Grainger, head of Honeywell Ventures. “We want to sell to everyone's drones.”

Honeywell Ventures has also invested in California-based AirMap, a leading provider of unmanned traffic management (UTM) and fleet management solutions for enterprise drone use.

Fra AIN:

Honeywell Flight Tests Sensors for UAM Autonomous Ops

Honeywell Aerospace has started flight testing new sensors intended to support autonomous operations of aircraft in urban air mobility (UAM) environments. From its base in Phoenix, the company is using an Airbus AS350 helicopter to test the sensors, and the aircraft is also fitted with cameras to analyze visual markings that look like QR codes to guide it to a designated landing area.

Earlier this month, Honeywell launched a new Unmanned Aerial Systems business unit to focus on unmanned aircraft and the UAM sector, for which numerous new eVTOL models are under development. It intends to conduct additional testing of autonomous flight technology with partners that include eVTOL developers such as Vertical Aerospace.

The flight testing will continue throughout 2020 and gather data on the performance of the sensors to support further improvements. Honeywell aims to be able to demonstrate fully automated landings by around mid-2021 as it prepares to add this capability to its product portfolio.

“Introducing numerous piloted and autonomous aircraft in dense urban environments is a real challenge in making the UAM vision achievable,” commented Matt Picchetti, Honeywell’s v-p and general manager of navigation and sensors. The company is leveraging its experience in developing autopilots.

This story comes from the new FutureFlight.aero resource developed by AIN to provide objective, independent coverage, and analysis of new aviation technology, including electric aircraft developments.