Recently, Blue Vector Intelligent Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. (“Blue Vector”) and the Xi’an Flight Automatic Control Research Institute of Aviation Industry Corporation of China (“FACRI”) signed a strategic cooperation and product development agreement, and formally launched the JCDP/JDP work.
With senior executives from both sides looking on, Zhang Xu, Co-founder and COO of Blue Vector, and Zhang Xiaobo, Head of the Project Operations Department of FACRI Co.¹, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations.
The signing is an important step in deepening cooperation and strengthening technical synergy between the two parties. They will cooperate in areas related to the eVTOL flight control system (“flight control system”), promoting coordinated development of the complete aircraft and key system technologies, and creating room for future cooperation in technology development, engineering and productization, and application exploration.
The two parties also formally launched the JCDP/JDP work. Building on their initial collaboration, they will form a joint team, establish communication mechanisms, and set shared goals to advance the development and airworthiness work of the flight control system for the SKYLA V30 engineering demonstrator.
A Strong Alliance to Build a World-Class Aircraft
The flight control system is one of the most critical onboard systems, bearing directly on eVTOL flight safety and passenger lives. It spans multiple disciplines, including electronics and mechanics, and combines high hardware and software complexity, making engineering and airworthiness certification highly challenging. It places very high demands on both the aircraft manufacturer and the flight control system supplier: safety/reliability architecture design, system-level architecture design, verification and integration, and software and hardware development, verification, and testing.
FACRI is a leading Chinese enterprise in flight control systems, with long-standing expertise in guidance, navigation, and control (GNC), as well as intelligent sensing and electronic information technologies. It has extensive full-lifecycle experience in flight control systems and has served almost every military and civil aircraft model in China. Blue Vector focuses on eVTOL development, production, sales, and operational services, with the experience and capability to develop high-safety systems and obtain airworthiness certification across the full lifecycle, and it continues to advance the development and validation of related products. Each party’s accumulated strengths in its own field lay a solid foundation for building a flight control system tailored to eVTOLs and a high-safety eVTOL aircraft.
Through this product development agreement, the two parties will jointly advance the SKYLA V30’s engineering, airworthiness certification, and highly safe, highly economical operation across its full lifecycle. They will bridge complete-aircraft development with flight control system technology, set an industry benchmark for the engineering, airworthiness, and application of critical onboard systems on new types of aircraft, and build a world-class eVTOL aircraft.
Strategic Cooperation for the Future of Low-Altitude Mobility
Beyond product-level cooperation, the two parties are elevating their partnership to the strategic level. They will explore and innovate in areas related to flight control and management, and will explore the development of related technologies and system architectures around the “software-defined aircraft” concept.
The “software-defined aircraft” concept emphasizes the role of software in realizing aircraft functions and coordinating systems, and places higher demands on system architecture, hardware-software coordination, and subsequent iteration. For eVTOLs, as product development and validation continue, a shared challenge for aircraft and onboard system developers is how to balance system integration, functional expansion, and later maintenance while still meeting safety and reliability requirements. Exploring these technologies requires aircraft-level requirements and system capabilities to work in step, and depends on sustained engineering practice.
This signing ceremony opens a new chapter of comprehensive cooperation between Blue Vector and FACRI in eVTOL flight control systems. Going forward, the two parties will continue to advance the related work in the spirit of the agreement, explore collaborative paths between key onboard system technologies and complete-aircraft development, and move forward together toward the broad future of eVTOL technology and low-altitude mobility applications.
Note ¹: FACRI Co. is an enterprise converted from a public institution, at the same management level as FACRI. It was formed through the conversion and transfer of the institute’s public-institution assets. The two share the same legal representative, and their decision-making leadership is drawn from the institute’s senior officials.
