Project description
Flying away from aircraft wiring
The amount of wiring in any aircraft is remarkable. If stretched out, the wires that run within the Airbus A380 plane, for instance, could connect Brussels with Zurich. This is 500 km. What is more, the cabling weighs 7.5 tonnes. This adds to fuel consumption and costs money in terms of installation, maintenance and retrofitting. The EU-funded Project RACOON initiative is working to change this by making wireless as effective as wires. The German software company R3 has developed a world-first ‘cooperative diversity’ between transceivers to leverage all the chips in a system as ‘assistant senders’ to each other. Short of replacing all the wiring in a plane, the project will aim to develop flexible wireless controls to enhance safety and create return on investment across aviation by replacing wires with real-time wireless where ecologically and economically worthwhile.
Objective
Advances in automating transport and industry – the realisation of the Industrial Internet of Things – are being held back by something very simple: wiring.
There are 550km of wires in an Airbus A380 plane: 7.5 tonnes of cabling adding to fuel consumption on every flight. Wiring costs money: in weight, installation time, maintenance, and retrofitting.
But until now the accuracy and latency needed for automated machine control systems using wireless technology have simply not been available: too much data is lost and lag is too great for industrial automation, still less aircraft controls.
R3 is a German software company whose goal is to fix that, making wireless as effective as wires. Our world-first innovation uses “co-operative diversity” between transmitters: we leverage all the chips in a system as “assistant senders” to each other. We have demonstrated we can cut data loss to <3 packets in 10M and achieve sub-10-ms latency. That is 124x better than any competition, and runs on standard wireless chips. As a result we already have clients in in robotics and factory automation.
But we see a transformative business opportunity worth tens of millions of euros of early revenue in the aviation sector, and we therefore seek funding for a project to build a new and massively more reliable co-operative wireless architecture for high-performance avionics in a Eur78bn market. We can’t replace all the wiring in a plane, but we can seriously contribute to future low-emissions aircraft, with flexible wireless controls that enhance safety and create ROI across aviation. We are have contracts with or LOIs from future customers in aircraft manufacture, airline operations/maintenance, cabin fittings and equipment services, avionics manufacture, and the booming aircraft retro-fitting sector.
This project will position R3 for rapid growth, first by transforming the avionics controls market; and then feeding back to our existing client base and accelerating industrial automation.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringrobotics
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technology
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
10625 Berlin
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.