GE Aviation and Barco's Defence & Aerospace division have signed an MOU for collaboration in the development of a new family of open system cockpit display products, targeted at display and avionic system applications for helicopters.

“This collaboration builds upon our experience with Barco in this sector and our successful delivery of cockpit display systems for the UK Wildcat, Merlin and International AW159 helicopter display systems,” said Alan Caslavka, president of Avionics & Digital Systems for GE Aviation. “We will be able to provide customers with the most advanced flight deck with embedded applications while driving efficiency and reducing through life cost.”

Barco will bring world leading cockpit display design and manufacturing capability to be combined with GE Aviation expertise in thermal management, graphics processing, application development and computing in order to create a low profile, passively cooled cockpit display system. This solution will deliver primary display system functionality and be capable of hosting third-party applications within an open system environment.

This collaboration combines the companies' respective investments in new technology with their experience in delivering integrated cockpit display systems, open architecture ARINC 653 computing platforms, and expertise in the design and production of high quality cockpit displays for a new generation of flexible display and computing products.

It is anticipated that the products will be integrated with an open suite of development and integration tools enabling aircraft prime contractors and application providers to collaborate in customising functionality and optimising aircraft performance. The solutions are intended to host existing applications from the two companies and be compatible with industry standard ARINC 653 and Barco's MOSArt application interfaces.

“Barco is delighted to be working with GE Aviation on this innovation and to continue their fruitful co-operation in this area,” said Dave Scott, SVP Barco NV, General Manager Defence & Aerospace Division.