Blog

How did you get into AI/ML/Computer Vision? It's a total cliche, but I got really interested in re-CAPTCHA as a high school student. I thought both the whole concept of CAPTCHAs as a mechanism for validating human-ness and the fact that there were people out there that could program a computer to read obfuscated text super cool. Why did you decide to work in Aerospace? After my PhD, rather than staying in a research role, I was looking to do applied AI work. The aerospace dom

We welcome Jose Medina to the VTI Engineering team as the latest software engineer focusing on FlightStack development! Can you tell us a little about your background and how you got into engineering? I started my career at Boeing over 8 years ago as a mechanical engineer. Over the years, I was able to work on engineering teams in all sorts of airplane systems from flight controls, mission systems, advanced cargo tracking systems and flight automation, among others. I loved w

Earlier this month, members of the VTI Aerospace team came together in Colorado for some focused collaboration, strategy, and flight planning. The purpose? To align in advance of our upcoming presence at one of the world’s largest aviation gatherings, EAA AirVenture 2025 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. With team members spread across the country, opportunities to connect face-to-face are important and impactful. Colorado served as the perfect backdrop for high-altitude thinking and lo

VTI is thrilled to welcome our newest engineer, and first engineer dedicated to frontend development, Chase Fielder. Get to know a bit about Chase in this Q&A What inspired you to pursue a career in this field? I grew up building and flying radio controlled aircraft with my grandfather. Since middle school, I’ve been designing and building my own RC aircraft, and planned to go to school for aerospace engineering. I caught the computer science bug while in university, and thou

Back in high school, I had a history class assignment to speak with a WWII veteran. The gentleman that I met had piloted cargo aircraft from various Pacific Northwest locations to bases on the Aleutian Islands - often at night and always off the coast of Alaska. He recounted a navigational approach that involved holding an altitude and adjusting his heading based on radio directions from ground tracking stations. About as simple as it gets! But needless to say, he put full fa

Last week, VTI enjoyed the opportunity to share the company’s development progress at an FAA AI Safety Assurance Technical Exchange hosted by MITRE. In our presentation we covered not only how our technology could improve situational awareness for current pilots, but we also discussed the scalability of our development philosophy. Some common questions arose during and after our presentation, so we thought we’d continue the conversation here by responding to the most common t

At the end of 2023, we decided to update our logo to reflect the progress we've made. We hope the orange of the icon conveys our commitment to safety while the "chevron" motif evokes precision, flight, and "gateways" to safe journeys. Cheers!

The accident on Jan 2, 2024 at Tokyo Haneda airport and the subsequent media analysis highlights a complex network of safety features surrounding all aircraft operations. The miraculous evacuation of the Japan Airlines A350 notwithstanding, gaps in the safety systems and communications protocols led to the loss of life onboard the Japanese Coast Guard Dash 8. As coverage shifts into deeper analysis, we wanted to share our notes and offer our perspectives based on initial repo

In mid-November, VTI started a data collection campaign ('code named' Blue Horizons) with Western Michigan Aviation Academy (WMAA) and the support of the Ford Launchpad for Innovative Technologies and Entrepreneurship (FLITE).  Nearly one month on from the start of the project, we are excited to share sample imagery from the automated data collection platform housed inside a SkyIMD sensor pod. The small sampling of images below demonstrate the rich variety of data that we've

Hardware-in-the-Loop System Displays VTI’s FlightStack augments Enhanced Vision Systems (EVS) with automated visual callouts of runways, landing and departing traffic, and approach guidance. This context improves the interpretability of EVS video for better pilot situational awareness. In our previous posts, we described the use of synthetic data for model development, methods for scaled testing of our software stack and flight test campaigns for real world validation. But ho