Embraer’s automatic take-off system for the E2 is intended to offer increased range by balancing various criteria in order to ensure greater accuracy and efficiency during rotation.
The airframer aims to make the Embraer Enhanced Take-off System – or E2TS – available from the fourth quarter of next year.
Embraer says automatic landings have been operational since the mid-1960s, driven by the benefit of enabling low-visibility arrivals, but take-off has remained a manual procedure.
It outlined the principle benefits of climb-optimised automatic take-off in a US patent document in 2014, pointing out that modelling the ground-to-air transition from the point of rotation is complex, and that the distance needed for the transition is normally calculated with simplified models based on flight-test data.
The transition features a number of constraints on parameters including the speed at rotation, pitch angle, and the rate of pitch increase.
“In order to comply with all the applicable requirements while not demanding exceptional skill from the pilot, aircraft manufacturers will usually define a fixed take-off pitch for each take-off configuration, to be commanded at [rotation speed] with a given rotation rate,” states the patent.
It adds that determination of take-off distances during flight-test campaigns is influenced by the need to reproduce performance in airline operations and the natural variance of individual test-pilot techniques.
“Aircraft short-field performance can be severely affected by these operational constraints, leading to a non-optimal take-off distance calculation model,” it says.
Embraer’s take-off automation concept is based on turning excess kinetic energy into potential energy – namely height – by capitalising on the aircraft’s performance capabilities to assess and deliver the optimum pitch attitude on rotation.
It indicates, in a European patent published in 2020, that the aircraft could use aerodynamics effects from a non-trimmed stabiliser to increase pitch rates, and align control sufaces to achieve lateral as well as longitudinal optimisation.
Automating the take-off, minimising pilot actions, would enable the aircraft to achieve a shorter take-off run while still respecting minimum required climb gradient and the need to avoid tail-strike.
The airframer says this would result in an increase in aircraft performance compared with a conventional take-off, particularly from demanding airports such as London City – from where it claims an additional 350nm range could be extracted – as well as Florence or Rio de Janeiro’s Santos Dumont.
“What this eventualy does, it either gives you more fuel at take-off, which gives you more range, or can give you more payload to take away from the airport,” said Embraer commercial aviation chief Arjan Meijer during a Farnborough air show presentation.
He indicates that the E195-E2 could extend its operations from London City “well into Africa and well into Turkey”.
Embraer states that the pilot does not need to take action to rotate the aircraft with E2TS but will monitor progress adding that, in the “very improbable” case of a failure, the pilot will be able to take control of the aircraft safely and smoothly.
