SkytronOS: Autonomous Flight Display System

SkytronOS

Flight Display Software for the Plane That Flies Itself

Designed and engineered the SkytronOS flight display system for Skytron Aerospace, a Los Angeles-based startup building a 4-seat autonomous aircraft with full envelope protection. Led the end-to-end HMI and UX design of the Primary Flight Display (PFD) and Multi-Function Display (MFD), and implemented the display software in Rust for the production avionics stack.

The Skytron aircraft targets a range of 800 nautical miles at 180 knots with twin Rotax 916 iS engines, three voting flight control computers, and an airframe parachute system. The flight display is the crew interface to all of it.

Challenge

General aviation avionics have not fundamentally changed in decades. Skytron's vision is an aircraft that can auto takeoff, auto-fly, and auto-land while remaining responsive and transparent to the pilot. The HMI challenge: design a display system that communicates autonomous flight states clearly, prevents pilot error, and scales gracefully from a first-time flier to an experienced GA pilot.

Approach

• Mapped the complete UX Display Map across all flight phases: Preflight, Takeoff, Enroute, Landing, and Shutdown. Defined which modes and data surfaces belong to the PFD versus MFD at each phase of flight.
• Designed the Smart Annunciation system: context-aware ATC advisories and autopilot mode change alerts that interrupt without overwhelming. The system distinguishes between action required and advisory states with distinct visual and spatial hierarchies.
• Built a 3D Airspace Visualization layer on the PFD showing live traffic, airspace class boundaries, and terrain in a synthetic vision environment. Designed for at-a-glance situational awareness, not heads-down data parsing.
• Designed the "North Star UX" concept: the aspirational version of the cockpit experience for the dual-screen glass panel, including the PFD terrain tape, heading arc, and MFD flight plan view.
• Implemented SkytronOS in Rust using a custom canvas rendering pipeline. The renderer targets 60 fps on embedded hardware with deterministic frame timing, no garbage collection, and zero dynamic allocation on the hot path.

Display Architecture

The SkytronOS display splits across two screens:

• PFD (Primary Flight Display): Attitude, airspeed, altitude, vertical speed, heading, and autopilot flight mode annunciator. Terrain awareness layer and smart annunciation overlay.
• MFD (Multi-Function Display): Flight plan and moving map, Comms panel, Checklists, and Clearance management. Reconfigures per flight phase.

Both displays share a common data bus fed by three voting flight control computers. Display failures are isolated per screen with automatic reversion modes.

Outcome

• SkytronOS entered production development as the avionics software stack for Skytron's Entry Into Service aircraft.
• The PFD and Smart Annunciation systems were validated against the target pilot population: student pilots, sport pilots, and instrument-rated GA pilots.
• The 3D Airspace visualization was cited as a key differentiator for pilot situational awareness during early test evaluations.
• The Rust implementation demonstrated stable 60 fps frame delivery under simulated avionics workloads with latency well within FAA display response requirements.

Tools Used

• Rust: flight display renderer, canvas pipeline, AHRS data binding
• Figma: UX Display Map, PFD/MFD UI design, North Star UX concept
• Unreal Engine: 3D cockpit visualization and concept rendering
• Python: simulation scripts for AHRS data replay and test scenarios