The ePlane Company is working on India’s first electric air taxi, the e200x, with NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to build a “Digital Twin” for aerospace simulation. By using the NVIDIA IGX platform for onboard computing, it improves critical application performance and pilot awareness in today’s aviation.
This enables simulations of aerodynamic interactions and scenarios, which can solve the issues in urban air mobility. The Digital Twin makes it possible to conduct extensive virtual simulations, allowing the algorithms to be ready for real-world situations, thus cutting down on physical simulations. The ePlane Company has plans to use NVIDIA Cosmos models and the Nemotron family in the future.
Building a digital ecosystem in aviation:
As per Prof. Satya Chakravarthy, Founder & CTO, The ePlane Company, “What we are doing is not just building an aircraft. We are building an ecosystem. With NVIDIA, we can now blur the lines between the digital and the physical. By proving our flight operations solution in NVIDIA Omniverse, we are essentially testing the limits of the aircraft thousands of times over in simulation so that we never have to do so in reality. This is what it means to have sovereign aerospace capability.”
The partnership brings about advancements in the Indian aviation industry with the use of high-performance computing (HPC) and the best GPUs available in the world for real-time physics simulations. This enables a high-fidelity digital twin that serves as a predictive analytics platform, allowing for predictive maintenance of aircraft parts.
Virtual testing improves safety and innovation:
“This is not just a simulation; it is a time machine for safety. Our planes live a thousand lives in the virtual test bed where the algorithms can learn the unknown, test the remotest of scenarios, and improve exponentially. This will accelerate innovation and help us build more with less. Every decision is proven and perfected in the virtual world so that safety is absolute in the physical world,” said Bakthakolahalan Shyamsundar, Principal Engineer – Avionics Systems & Autonomy, The ePlane Company.
Integrated systems for certification:
“As we embark on certifying our aircraft, our engagement with NVIDIA is centered on developing the aircraft, sensors, and edge computing on the aircraft as one integrated, certifiable system,” said Vishnu Ramakrishnan, SVP – Business Partnerships & AAM Strategy, The ePlane Company. “By leveraging the NVIDIA Omniverse-based digital twin and the mission-critical edge computing on the aircraft, we are setting the stage for certifying advanced computing platforms for use in aviation in India,” he added.
Paving the way for electric aviation in India:
Tobias Halloran, Director of EMEAI Startups and Venture Capital at NVIDIA, further added, “The AI startup scene in India is ready to be fueled, thanks to the country’s world-class technical talent and ambitions. NVIDIA is fueling this movement by providing founders direct access to accelerated computing, global-scale AI infrastructure, and initiatives such as NVIDIA Inception for startups and the NVIDIA VC Alliance, to enable startups to scale quickly and build for the world.”
The ePlane Company is leading the way in electric aviation, combining domestic engineering prowess with the best global technology collaborations.
