Airbus // Universal Registration Document 2023
1. Information on the Company’s Activities 1.3 Other corporate activities
– – Completed assembly of a high-aspect ratio wingbox structure and of a folding wingtip specimen for demonstration purposes. – – Full-scale demonstration of automated assembly capability on a nose fuselage floor module. – –Mid-size drilling robot prototype completed for industrial automation. Low carbon technologies continue to be a strong focus. As part of its ambition to lead the decarbonisation of the aerospace sector, Airbus will continue to develop hydrogen technologies around propulsion and liquid hydrogen storage and distribution systems. Airbus has also engaged in many strategic partnerships around the world aimed at understanding and exploring the hydrogen ecosystem to support the successful entry into service of a hydrogen powered aircraft. This accelerated in 2023 with major breakthroughs, such as the demonstration of a 1.2MW fuel cell power generation, as well as the first flight ever fully powered with gaseous hydrogen, thanks to the Blue Condor demonstrator. In parallel, different aircraft configurations will be explored and developed in 2024, to assess more efficient ways to integrate these technologies inside the aircraft. The Company will also continue its efforts to support its customers to build their route to lower carbon operations, and to grow its partnership landscape for critical technology enablers and related ecosystems. Airbus Helicopters In 2023, the Research and Innovation department actively continued its activities related to the main demonstrators and roadmaps for key technology building blocks. The DisruptiveLab demonstrator completed its first flight campaign, with more than 40 flight hours. Main sub-systems concepts and the global aerodynamic architecture were successfully demonstrated in flight. The next steps will be to address new propulsion technology and first autonomy functions. After the power-on end of 2023, the RACER demonstrator (Rapid and Cost Efficient Rotorcraft) is now in preparation for clearance to perform the milestone first flight, and the main gearbox and engine systems are installed on the prototype. The first flight is planned for early 2024. The H130 FlightLab continued the functional demonstrations of several new helicopter capacities: – – cable detection with a dedicated hardware set-up; – – HUMS (Health & Usage Monitoring System) and Rotor tracking balance for light helicopters; – – autonomous navigation set-up based on Vertex, a project to demonstrate a fully automated flight. – – City Airbus NextGen advanced piloting sleeves. The “Pioneer lab” (the H145 FlightLab), was unveiled with a first 330° rotor strike alerting system demonstration from the 220° solution already demonstrated for H130. Airbus Defence and Space In 2023, the Company continued its already established R&T management philosophy of balancing the self-funded R&T portfolio with a mix of short-term and long-term technologies. Key technologies that are reaching sufficient maturity to enter into a programme-driven industrialisation phase are fed into the Company’s products and solutions. Further, the Company devotes a significant part of its portfolio to technologies that are not expected to reach high maturity in the near-term, but are considered critical to Airbus Defence and Space.
These are technologies the Company needs to master to maintain its competitive position in the mid-to-long-term ( e.g. Quantum, Photonics and Optical Comms, safety-critical autonomy and advanced AI applications). Airbus has identified a set of Top 10 Technologies for Airbus Defence and Space through an exhaustive exercise with different stakeholders. Assessments included heterogeneous aspects such as business potential, transversal character for their adoption, in-house skills and competences, competitive benchmarking and the partnerships and cooperation landscape. The Top 10 technologies are as follows: Artificial Intelligence, Quantum, Visual-Based Navigation, Prognostic Health management, Robotics, Optical and Photonics, Software-defined networking, Computing platforms, 5G/6G and Low Observability. The Company has produced a dedicated R&T roadmap and technology deep-dive for each of these elements. In terms of technological achievements on the self-funded R&T portfolio, significant progress has been achieved across the portfolio with direct applicability to elements across all Airbus Defence and Space Program Lines and across the overall portfolio of products and solutions. A few examples are: – – jointly developed with Airbus UpNext, the MRTT programme flights, the new Autonomous Formation Flight and Autonomous Air-to-Air refuelling (A4R) capabilities, using the A310 flight test bed and multiple DT25 aircraft (see section on Airbus UpNext regarding Auto’Mate); – –development of an optical feeder on-board terminal for very high-capacity telecommunication space satellites (TELEO), launched to space as a hosted payload in the mission BADR8; – – handover to the Program and Chief Engineering Office of the technical results allowing the use of additive manufacturing techniques and Scalmalloy® material for the Eurodrone UAS; – –development and delivery of a set of advanced features and algorithms for data and imagery utilisation, including functions such as Aerial Video Line of Sight Refinement, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Video Indexing & Summarization and ISR Tracking Techniques for complex surveillance; – –final delivery to the industrial environment of an in-house developed proximity warning system which will enhance health and safety standards in the shop floor daily operations; – – deployment of an experimental setup consisting of a free space optical link implementing several Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) mechanisms which have demonstrated huge improvements in terms of secure and encrypted communication. The Airbus Defence and Space footprint within the home countries and European eco-systems of Research and Technology has been reinforced during 2023. Through the crystallisation of the Company’s Research and Technology National plans, which have been widely communicated to major external stakeholders, including the national MoDs, the EU Commission, the European Defence Agency (EDA) and European Space Agency (ESA). Out of the European Defence Funds 2022 call for tender, which was concluded in mid-2023, Airbus Defence and Space is participating in 10 collaborative defence research and development projects funded by the European Commission. Out of those 10 projects, Airbus Defence and Space will lead four of them and contribute to
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Universal Registration Document 2023
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