A century of flight, decades of electronics

With the centennial celebration of the Wright brothers' flight front and center, we're witnessing widespread interest in the pioneering aviators. Discussing the fete a while back, several of our staff members began talking about the role of electronics in airplanes. That discussion prompted a plan to pay tribute in EDN to the Wright brothers and many other pioneers in flight with a three-part look at the impact of electronics on aviation, as well as an article on a specialized unmanned aircraft vehicle.

The Wright brothers exhibited uncanny knowledge of aerodynamics and bravely flew a plane that was essentially unstable. Indeed, here in San Diego, where I live, the aerospace museum has a simulator of the Wright Flyer that even skilled pilots struggle to keep aloft. And several groups currently building replicas of the Wright Flyer are discovering just how tough it was to master that first plane. The Wright brothers' trials and tribulations were apt precursors to those of many other aviation pioneers that figured out jet propulsion, broke the sound barrier, and made commercial aviation only slightly more complex—and perhaps safer—than taking a taxi.

Over the century of flight, aerospace engineers have made steady progress in aerodynamics. But the complete integration of electronics into an airplane is a fairly recent occurrence. The Wright Flyer had nothing electrical onboard other than the magneto and spark plugs—not surprising, given that the plane was built a century ago. But consider small general-aviation planes today. Certainly, they rely on electronics for radio communication and navigation, but engine and flight control are still mechanical in nature.

Military aviation has been at the forefront of bringing electronics into the fabric of aircraft. Commercial aviation is following suit. And electronics will be the necessary technology that allows aerospace engineers to continue driving down the cost and increasing the performance of aircraft of all types. Ironically, the airframe of the highest performance planes in the world—military fighters—has come full circle. The demand for maneuverability in fighters means that aerospace engineers can't design the planes for maximum lift and smooth flight. Fighter designs are inherently unstable from an aerodynamics perspective. The engines compensate for the lift problem, but the resulting plane can be flown only with the aid of computers.

What if the Wright brothers had owned a PC to model aerodynamics and, perhaps more important, an embedded computer to monitor thousands of sensors and control thousands of actuators? Well, clearly they would have been overwhelmed. But, as EDN executive editor Bill Schweber pointed out this year, the brothers were engineers in the truest sense (Reference 1). They built wind tunnels and did extensive research. And the sky would have been the limit had they had access to modern tools.

We applaud the brothers' accomplishments and the accomplishments of all the other engineers that have followed in their footsteps.

Contact me at mgwright@edn.com.