Aerofugia and Sysgo Partner to Develop Certifiable Avionics Platform for AE200-100 eVTOL

Aerofugia and Sysgo are collaborating on a certifiable avionics platform for the AE200-100 eVTOL, built on ARMv8 technology and Sysgo's PikeOS real-time operating system.

Original report
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Industry impact

The partnership reflects a broader eVTOL industry shift toward consolidated, certification-ready avionics architectures designed to meet DAL A software assurance standards from the outset.

Aerofugia, a developer of next-generation eVTOL aircraft, and Sysgo, a European provider of real-time operating systems and hypervisors for safety- and security-critical embedded applications, have announced a collaboration on the avionics platform for Aerofugia's AE200-100 eVTOL program. The architecture is built on ARMv8 technology and Sysgo's PikeOS real-time operating system and hypervisor, using a partitioned design aligned with concepts such as ARINC 653 that allows applications of different criticality levels to share computing resources while maintaining spatial and temporal separation. PikeOS combines a hard real-time operating system with separation-kernel and hypervisor functionality, targeting high software assurance levels under DO-178C, including Design Assurance Level A.

By consolidating functions that would traditionally require multiple dedicated computing units, the approach aims to reduce size, weight, power consumption, and cost, while creating a scalable software foundation for future aircraft development. Alex Tu, chief of production at Aerofugia, said certification must be considered from the beginning of the architecture design process, with the AE200-100 platform built for certification, commercial operation, and continued evolution. Christopher Hohenberg, project manager at Sysgo, said the decisive factor is an architecture that makes consolidation manageable and certification achievable. Certification considerations for the AE200-100 include requirements from the Civil Aviation Administration of China as well as alignment with certification principles applied by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, reflecting the program's international commercial ambitions.