Aviation Week reports, “Millions of dollars have flown into the nascent electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) sector over the past several years, as investors bet that quiet, emissions-free air taxis will unlock a new wave of demand for urban air mobility (UAM). While those services are not expected to reach scale until the next decade, air taxi startups are looking toward the airport shuttle mission as an initial launch application in the coming years, promising to shave long trips on congested urban road networks down to 10-20 mins. or less.”
Full Story (Aviation Week)
Tag: urban air mobility
UAS Service Industry Call for FAA Regulatory Framework
Aviation Today reports that uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) service suppliers are requesting for the FAA “to implement a regulatory framework to safely integrate small UAS into airspace at altitudes of 400 feet and below, after years of delays.” The FAA is “working with industry and public stakeholders to develop a UAS traffic management (UTM) system.” The FAA began “collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2015 to establish and implement a framework to research, develop and test increasingly complex UTM concepts and capabilities with industry stakeholders.” Aloft Founder and CEO Jon Hegranes said that the FAA and NASA are “sitting on their hands,” waiting to “see what industry does.” The emergence of UAS “has the potential to provide significant social and economic benefits to the United States, according to a January 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.” The FAA in 2020 “forecasted that, by 2024, the small UAS commercial fleet, those operating in connection to a business, would grow from 507,000 to 828,000.”
Full Story (Aviation Today)
Aerospace Entrepreneurs Try and Find a Way Around City Traffic
Panelists: Moderators Brian J. German, associate professor, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; JoeBen Bevirt, founder, Joby Aviation; Geoffrey Bower, chief engineer, A^3 by Airbus Group; Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; David Josephson, engineer/CEO, Josephson Engineering Inc.; Mark D. Moore, director of aviation, Uber Engineering; Tine Tomažič, director of research and development, Pipistrel; Jon Rimanelli, founder and CEO, AirspaceX
by Hannah Godofsky, AIAA Communications
A new wave of aerospace entrepreneurs and technology startups are stepping in to try and solve the problem of traffic, and according to a panel of experts at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver, it could be done with vertical takeoff and landing, or VTOL, aircraft.
As any commuter knows, roadway congestion eats up a huge amount of time and energy, and “traffic is taking over our lives,” Jon Rimanelli, founder and CEO of AirspaceX, said during the discussion June 8.
Rimanelli cited figures showing that each driver loses about $1,400 in fuel costs and productivity each year due to traffic.
“Key to this future is leveraging the automotive industrial base,” he said, adding that his company works with Uber, which has disrupted the taxi and car markets with its ridesharing app.
“Our mission is to support Uber, and their mission is to move people,” Rimanelli said.
Mark Moore, director of aviation at Uber Engineering, said his company’s working on making electric VTOL a reality and plans to tests the system as soon as 2020.
“Uber is going to connect the users to the network. Uber is a software company, and there is a great deal of software in this ecosystem,” Moore said. “Uber will be very active in developing the network, including the network operations center.”
But, Moore insists, “We see many participants in this system.”
One such example is Pipistrel, whose director of research and development, Tine Tomažič, explained where electric flight is at in terms of development today.
“We understand what happens when you are really challenged with power demands,” Tomažič said.
However, he said, some of the problems that still need to be solved before e-VTOL is a reality on a mass scale aren’t directly related to the vehicles themselves.
“When these vehicles are connected all the time to the service network, one has to think, ‘how do you isolate the vehicles from cyberattacks?’” Tomažič said.
Other obstacles panelists noted are potential objections from local governments or federal regulators.
“You have to make the case that the tradeoff between noise to the community and benefit to the community is positive,” said David Josephson, engineer and CEO of Josephson Engineering Inc.
Greg Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, said he’s skeptical the infrastructure is ready for e-VTOL on a mass scale.
“When we talk about the needs of charging one of these vehicles in five minutes, it’s like adding a grocery store to the grid for five minutes,” Bowles said.
Despite these risks, even large companies like Airbus are investing in e-VTOL technology, said Geoffrey Bower, chief engineer of A^3 at Airbus Group.
“We’re trying to disrupt Airbus and the rest of the aerospace industry before somebody else does,” he said. “The technology, the components are there; we just need the integration.”
Rimanelli urged regulators: “What we need you to do is collaborate, partner or get out of the way.”
Rolls-Royce Expects Electric Air Taxis in Three to Five Years
Fortune reports that Rolls-Royce “expects a fully-electric small aircraft in three to five years.” Rolls-Royce Electrical Division President Rob Watson said, “We are confident in the technology. Now we need to scale it so it can have a meaningful economic influence. I think that’s where you see urban air mobility and regional air mobility, aircraft with 8-18 seats, becoming a real possibility in the next three to five years.”
Full Story (Fortune)
Eve Urban Air Mobility to Go Public
Aviation International News reports that Eve Urban Air Mobility on Tuesday “became the latest eVTOL aircraft developer to announce plans to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.” Known backers include “scheduled airlines SkyWest and Republic Airways, which along with leasing group Azurra Aviation on Tuesday confirmed provisional orders for up to 500 of the Eve eVTOL vehicle, respectively committing to 100, 200, and 200 units each.” Embraer is to remain Eve’s majority shareholder, with an 82 percent stake, “that is also supported by $25 million from Zanite Sponsor and $105 million from a consortium of financial and strategic investors also including BAE Systems, Bradesco BBI, Falko Regional Aircraft, and Rolls-Royce.”
Full Story (Aviation International News)
Mainstreaming Urban Air Mobility
Panelists: Moderator Bruce Holmes, vice president for digital aviation, SmartSky Networks LLC; Carl Dietrich, chief technology officer and co-founder, Terrafugia; Mark Moore, director of engineering, Uber Elevate; Mark Cousin, senior vice president of flight demonstrators, Airbus; Brian Yutko, vice president of research and development, Aurora Flight Sciences
By Tom Risen, Aerospace America staff reporter (2017-2018)
Companies are building and testing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, to ferry people above car traffic, but they need to be safe, affordable and energy-efficient to become part of a daily commute. Entrepreneurs and engineers detailed how their companies are tackling these challenges Jan. 10 during the “Dude, Where’s My Flying Car” panel at the 2018 AIAA SciTech Forum in Kissimmee, Florida.
To build an urban air mobility ecosystem for these aircraft, vehicle manufacturers will have to coordinate with numerous types of organizations, including real estate providers to create landing pads known as skyports, said Mark Moore, director of engineering at California-based Uber Elevate.
“We will never build a vehicle, but we want to make sure that our partners who are building vehicles are successful and that these aircraft are as community-friendly as possible,” Moore said, explaining Uber Elevate’s partnership with manufacturers and regulatory agencies to clear the way for Uber to provide on-demand flight through a mobile app. Some of the companies partnering with Uber have not publicly released their aircraft concepts, so Moore unveiled a “common reference model” that illustrates some of the challenges these electric aircraft will face, including battery energy density and noise pollution.
“The batteries are almost there, because the longest distance we need to travel in between skyports is only 45 miles,” Moore said.
Noise and expense are two of the major reasons helicopters are not more widely used for urban transport, and eVTOLs will have to improve upon both to gain public acceptance, said Mark Cousin, senior vice president of flight demonstrators at Airbus.
Cousin predicted there would be “a multitude” of aircraft designs for the new generation of urban air mobility, referring to the numerous types of cars on the road. Airbus holds true to that example: a prototype of its CityAirbus air taxi will test fly at the end of 2018, he said. A full-scale demonstrator of the tandem tilt-wing Vahana aircraft by Airbus’ Silicon Valley arm, A3 [pronounced “A cubed”], “will fly within the next month,” he said.
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Regulatory and Operational Challenges of On-Demand Mobility
Panelists: Moderator Tom Gunnarson, regulatory affairs lead, Zee Aero; Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; Carl Dietrich, chief technology officer and co-founder, Terrafugia; Eric Mueller, aerospace engineer, NASA’s Ames Research Center; Sasha G. Rao, chair of intellectual property practice, Maynard Cooper & Gale; Wes Ryan, unmanned systems certification lead, FAA
by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor
Overcoming regulatory and operational barriers to achieve the dream of high-density urban mobility requires close collaboration between industry, government and academia, along with an incremental and methodical approach, said experts Jan. 10 during the “On-Demand Mobility – Regulatory and Operational Challenges” panel at the 2018 AIAA SciTech Forum in Kissimmee, Florida.
Rapid technological advancements in electric vertical takeoff and landing craft, or eVTOLs, and autonomous systems are making future on-demand urban mobility a certainty, panelists said. But, as panel moderator Tom Gunnarson of Zee Aero cautioned: “If we think about the men and women out there who are developing these fantastic machines, there has to be a path set before they can actually realize what they want to do with them.”
Gunnarson suggested the technological challenges posed by urban air mobility are unlikely to be as challenging as regulatory and operational ones.
“The really big bar in all of this may not be the development of the aircraft, but being able to operate it,” he said.
Gregory J. Bowles, vice president of global innovation and policy at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, wondered about FAA certification for new types of personal aerial vehicles and other autonomous eVTOL aircraft when they don’t fit under the current categories. He said that industry, in collaboration with government, needs to figure out where “we define these vehicles.”
Another significant challenge, Bowles said, is how to train future pilots of these aircraft, as well as what they’ll be trained to do. He noted it’s unlikely these aircraft will be totally autonomous initially.
“Some will have operators; some will have pilots,” Bowles said. “We need to look at what the human pilot does, what automation can do today and where’s that gap; that’s what needs to be trained.”
Wes Ryan, the unmanned systems certification lead for the FAA, said industry and academia should work with the FAA and NASA “to create a purposeful and evolutionary path to address the design of, the testing of, the operation of these pilotless aircraft at some point in the future.”
Carl Dietrich, chief technology officer and co-founder of Terrafugia, a Massachusetts-based company specializing in the development of flying cars expected to hit the market in 2019, said his company’s primary challenges are ensuring a potential market exists — and safety.
“We’re worried about our brand; we’re worried about liability,” he said, adding there are other concerns, such as rate of return, how quickly certification requirements can be determined or how complex a given supply chain may be.
But, Dietrich said, to realize the benefits of a potential market, a key challenge will be overcoming societal fear. He noted that if catastrophic accidents occur in a fully deployed on-demand urban mobility system at the same rate as auto accidents, they would equate to over 6,000 globally in a given year. Minimizing societal fear, Dietrich explained, must be done “at a very, very early stage; otherwise we’re going to be dead in the water as soon as someone gets out there with a vehicle and crashes.”
Airspace integration issues are another significant challenge, said Eric Mueller, an aerospace engineer at the NASA’s Ames Research Center. He noted that while it may be easy dealing with only a handful of aircraft aloft, it will become exponentially more challenging when also dealing with a number of Uber or Voom aircraft that want to share the same airspace.
“We need to have rules for those interactions and really consensus that those are fair rules,” he said. “An incremental or methodical approach to airspace integration, I think, can achieve this high-density urban air mobility operation.”
Sasha G. Rao, an attorney and chair of intellectual property practice at Alabama-based Maynard Cooper & Gale, cited three key legal and policy areas to consider regarding on-demand mobility: operations and infrastructure; how to work within the confines of the current patchwork of federal, state and local laws; and vehicle certification. She said it’s important to build a safety-case for personal aerial vehicles while developing standards that are much better than cars and what people see on the roads.
“And we have to educate the public to gain their acceptance,” Rao said.
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Third Aerospace Revolution Rapidly Changing the Face of Aviation
Speaker: Paul Eremenko, chief technology officer, Airbus
by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor
Airbus is determined to play a leading role in what Paul Eremenko, Airbus’ chief technology officer, considers the third aerospace revolution.
“This is a chance not just to influence, not just to leave a mark, but really to imagine and build the future of flight together,” Eremenko said June 6 during his keynote address, titled “Innovation in the Age of the Third Aerospace Revolution,” at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.
Referencing the Wright brothers and the dawn of aviation as the first revolution and the jet age of the 1950s as the second, Eremenko said that the third revolution, as evidenced by the current confluence of developing technologies and business opportunities, is remarkable.
“I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams that … a multibillion dollar market for commercial and consumer drones would emerge — and not just from us, the disruptors at the time, but from the cellphone industry,” he said. “When you have this kind of rapid technological evolution across multiple different domains, some kind of convergence, something interesting, is almost bound to happen.”
Eremenko explained that digital and electrical technological developments have already created a revolution in the aerospace industry that will lead to an even bigger development.
“I’m talking about the ability to manipulate matter, or in other words, the ability to design and create new materials and structures with ease and flexibility of writing a software specification,” he said, referring to reconfigurable manufacturing robotics, direct metal 3-D printing, and the ability to create new materials and structures using biological synthesis. “These and other technologies give us mastery over the creation of the physical product, could well lower the barrier to entry to aerospace even further and lead to opportunities for disruption.”
Referring to a presentation given by Airbus CEO Tom Enders at AIAA AVIATION 2015 in which Enders asked, “Are we moving fast enough,” Eremenko echoed Enders: “When we launched Airbus back in 1969, we weren’t just bold. Some might say we were downright rude. And it worked.”
Eremenko also discussed the rapid advances in electric flight. In 2010, Airbus sponsored the development of a small all-electric aircraft that has seen advancements every year since. In 2015, an Airbus test pilot flew the E-Fan across the English Channel.
Eremenko said the first powered flight of Airbus’ Vahana, a single-passenger all-electric, fully autonomous vertical takeoff and landing air-taxi demonstrator with a tilt-wing configuration, is slated for later this year.
“In V/TOL, we stand at a convergence point of several new technologies, namely autonomy, electric propulsion, low-cost mass manufactured composites … and the digitally enabled business model of on-demand personal mobility,” Eremenko said. “Combined, they seem to offer the realistic prospect of a new class of vehicles that could make the dream of urban air mobility finally real.”
Eremenko cautioned that the industry is still in the early stages of the urban air mobility journey, but he said he would be “astonished” not to see in the next four to five years a full-scale pilot of an urban air transport system in a major city.
“And I sure as hell want to help build it,” he said.