Joby Aviation acquires Xwing autonomy divison

Joby Aviation has announced the acquisition of the autonomous flight division of Xwing. Founded in 2016, Xwing has been flying autonomous aircraft since 2020, with 250 fully autonomous flights and more than 500 auto-landings completed to date using the Superpilot software it has developed in-house. “The acquisition brings Joby to the forefront of aviation autonomy and complements the company’s 2021 acquisition of Inras GmbH, a company developing lightweight, high-performance radar sensor technology,"" said Joby in a statement.  “Xwing’s comprehensive approach, and expertise in perception technology, system integration and certification, is expected to benefit both near-term piloted operations for Joby as well as fully autonomous operations in the future. “A diverse set of engineers, researchers and technologists from Xwing will now be integrated into Joby where they will focus on the increased automation and autonomy roadmap for the Joby aircraft as well as expanding opportunities to partner with the Department of Defense on technology development”. JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO, said: “The aircraft we are certifying will have a fully-qualified pilot on board, but we recognize that a future generation of autonomous aircraft will play an important part in unlocking our vision of making clean and affordable aerial mobility as accessible as possible. “The exceptionally talented Xwing team has not only made unparalleled progress on the development and certification of vision systems, sensor fusion and decision-making autonomous technologies, but they’ve also successfully demonstrated the real-life application of their technology, flying hundreds of fully autonomous flights in the national airspace."" Maxime Gariel, co-founder, president and chief technical officer of Xwing, added: “Xwing’s goal of connecting communities with clean and affordable autonomous flight aligns closely with Joby’s long-term vision. “For the past seven years, our team has broken barriers to advance aviation autonomy. Now, as we join forces with the leading electric air-taxi developer, I can’t imagine a better home for the Xwing team to realize our shared vision.” The acquisition covers all of Xwing’s existing automation and autonomy technology activities and was paid for with Joby shares. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.