ePlane Company Develops Digital Twin of e200x Air Taxi Using NVIDIA Technology, ETAuto
The ePlane Company, a Chennai-based electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer, has built a digital twin of its e200x electric air taxi using technology from NVIDIA, as it advances the aircraft towards certification and deployment, the firm said on Thursday.
According to the official press release, the company said it is using NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to create a high-fidelity virtual model of the e200x. The company is also adopting the NVIDIA IGX platform as the aircraft’s onboard computing system for critical applications.
Satya Chakravarthy, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of The ePlane Company, said that the company sees the virtual platform as central to its development strategy.
“We are not just building an aircraft; we are building an ecosystem. By validating our flight operations suite in NVIDIA Omniverse we are effectively pushing the limits of the aircraft thousands of times in simulation so that we never have to in reality,” he said.
Simulating flight conditions
The digital twin allows engineers to simulate aerodynamic interactions, sensor responses and flight scenarios before physical testing. According to the company, this approach helps validate flight physics, autonomy algorithms and sensor fusion systems in a controlled virtual environment.Bakthakolahalan Shyamsundar, principal engineer – Avionics Systems and Autonomy, said the digital testbed enables the company to train algorithms on complex scenarios before flight. “Our planes live a thousand lives in the digital testbed where the algorithms can master the unknown, test the most remote of scenarios and improve exponentially,” he said.
Urban air mobility presents operational challenges, including maintaining situational awareness and integrating multiple sensors such as cameras and radar. The IGX platform is designed to support data fusion, decision-making and visualisation through onboard edge computing.
The company said the virtual model enables testing of edge cases, including extreme weather conditions, sensor failures and collision scenarios, which are difficult and costly to replicate physically. It plans to use NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models and the NVIDIA Nemotron family of open models for future development.
Certification and computing integration
Vishnu Ramakrishnan, senior vice-president – business partnerships and AAM Strategy, said the company is treating the aircraft, its sensors and onboard computing as an integrated system for certification. “By combining NVIDIA Omniverse-based digital twins with mission-critical edge computing on the aircraft, we are laying the groundwork for certifying advanced computing platforms for aviation use in India,” he said.
Tobias Halloran, Director of EMEAI Startups and Venture Capital at NVIDIA, said the company is working with Indian startups by providing access to computing infrastructure and support programmes.
The ePlane Company, incubated at IIT Madras, is developing the e200x, a compact electric air taxi. It holds a Design Organisation Approval for a private electric aircraft in India and has set up a 60,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Chennai.
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