Flight Electronics at Joby Aviation

Originally posted in the Joby Aviation Newsletter:

It’s typical for an aircraft manufacturer to buy electronics from suppliers that make devices compatible with a wide array of companies and aircraft designs. However, in many cases, buying something generic meant accepting critical trade-offs as the parts included functionality we did not need or were lacking functions we required. Using third party systems would have required significant size, weight or complexity penalties we didn’t want to accept.

That's why we have taken a highly vertically-integrated approach to designing our aircraft:

• By designing, building and testing our flight electronics and wiring systems in-house, we have been able to reduce mass while increasing redundancy and integrating multiple functions into fewer devices. This has helped improve the performance of our aircraft while reducing the assembly time and maintenance profile of our systems, with fewer parts to install.

• We’ve been able to design a network switch that is smaller than a standard sheet of paper, while integrating additional functionality to our networks, eliminating the need for an entirely separate device.

• Our flight computer receives pilot inputs and sensor data from around the aircraft, translating it into instructions for the propulsion units and control surfaces. We were able to take all this functionality and put it into a robust device that weighs less than an iPhone.

• Our software also benefits from speaking a common language, with all of our hardware sharing common interfaces, meaning there are no layers of conversion or translation required in each connection. We will also be able to verify and deploy software updates more easily over the life of the fleet thanks to owning the majority of the tech stack.