The focus of the project is the development of a monitoring system for the highly critical VTOL operation. Advances in electromobility and automation technology enable the commercial use of highly automated aircraft with distributed electric propulsion systems.

Safety is an important success factor for such aircraft. To achieve this, the inherent complexity of the overall system must be identified in the form of precise requirements and consistently monitored during operation. In addition, development, operating and maintenance costs must be kept low in order to ensure economical operation of increasingly automated aircraft. The aim of the project is the automatic monitoring of parameters that are important for the safe commercial operation of an autonomous system. To increase the confidence in safety monitoring, the executable monitor is automatically generated from a formal specification of the desired behavior. The resulting transparency promises advantages for certification and economical operation. Analysis of the feedback for certification by secure, independent monitoring components is an essential topic.

The formal specification is separate from the control code and easier to understand, thus saving development and maintenance costs. Furthermore, conventional centralized monitoring procedures require the availability of all relevant data. In highly distributed avionics like that of the Volocopter it is necessary to execute the monitoring process at different system nodes, for which algorithms for monitoring have to be developed. In the project, the system monitoring approach is integrated on the basis of a formal specification for a Volocopter. This promises substantial improvements both in terms of security and from an economic point of view.