What Gaps Still Exist for eVTOL Regulatory
Standards?
By Kelsey Reichmann |
January 28, 2021
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Ampaire, CAMI, EVTOL, FAA, GAMA, regulatory, standards, Wisk
Wisk Aero is working on a certification path for
its self-flying all-electric air taxi Cora, pictured here. Tom Gunnarson, lead
of regulatory affairs at Wisk, was part of a Vertical Flight Society session on
Wednesday Jan. 27, discussing the need for more regulatory standards for a more
streamlined certification process of eVTOL aircraft.
There is currently a lack of consistency in
regulatory standards for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL)
aircraft, industry professionals said during Jan. 27 panel hosted by the
Vertical Flight Society’s 2021 Autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting and Electric
VTOL Symposium. While these standards are further developed, the industry and
regulators will have to tackle issues like finding consensus standards,
protecting proprietary information, and regulating new technology like
automation.
There are a number of gaps in current standards
that have forced applicants to flood regulatory bodies with proposals on means
of compliance to special conditions or rules and they each have to be evaluated
independently, William Schinstock, strategic policy manager for small airplanes
at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said during the panel.
“You lack consistency across the projects, there's
a lot of duplication, it's very time consuming, and it's a poor use of
resources, both for the applicants and for the FAA repeating a lot of work,”
Schinstock said. “I think that if we can reach a point where we have a
consistent comprehensive set of standards for eVTOL everybody will benefit.”
This does not only ease the burden on regulatory
bodies like the FAA but it is also harder to go to the FAA as one applicant as
opposed to having a consensus standard that the whole industry can agree on,
Tom Gunnarson, lead of regulatory affairs at Wisk, said.
“It's much more difficult as an applicant to go to
an authority like FAA on your own, and convince them that what you're proposing
is a good idea because one of the things that we hear very often from FAA is
what they'd really like to hear from is the whole industry,” Gunnarson said.
However, some things will not be able to be
standardized because they are proprietary or are unique to configuration or
platform, Gunnarson said.
“With eVTOL, with sort of massively distributed
propulsion systems where the propulsors are intimately involved in the flight
controls of those aircraft as well, that's one aspect where there's going to
probably be quite a lot of private intellectual property in terms of how those
functions are intermingling in the hardware and software that will remain
private,” Ed Lovelace, CTO at Ampaire, said.
Another area that could have difficulty with
consensus standards and is essential for eVTOLs is batteries, Mark DeAngelo,
aerospace engineer at SAE International, said.
“There are lots of solutions to creating an energy
source and then how it's distributed,” DeAngelo said. “So that is one of those
cases where it's really hard to standardize at this point.”
This gets even more complex when factoring in some
hybrid designs, Schinstock said. However, this does not mean that there is no
case for standardization in this area.
“I think there's some common ground between all of
them that we can find for the standards and then build on that for the unique
parts of the designs,” Schinstock said.
While eVTOLs themselves are a new technology they
also include other innovative technologies like autonomy that regulatory bodies
are unsure of how to regulate. Schinstock said autonomy will be a critical
design factor in eVTOL aircraft because of its ability to open up eVTOL to a
broader audience.
“If we can simplify the operation of the vehicle
and do that reliably, there's a lot of benefit in that,” Schinstock said. “I
think it will help aviation, in general, because it may reduce the amount of
fear people have of becoming a pilot.”
However, creating standards for this technology
will be uncharted waters. Christine DeJong, director of global innovation
policy at GAMA, said regulators should focus on creating standards for autonomy
that can be used in any system so that they are not dependent on each other.
“You can break down the content into really
focused areas and then…the standards can be kind of built up as a toolbox but
they're not completely dependent upon each other but they definitely are going
to rely on each other in a lot of ways,” DeJong said.
There are also still many questions about the
process of creating standards.
“I think actually the standards bodies are
beneficial in writing these new means of compliance,” FAA's Schinstock said.
“In the past what we would do in the FAA is we'd write a special condition for
one applicant, and we'd have a few people from the company and a few people
from the FAA sit down and draft the requirements…I think that the industry
standards and the international aspects of that where you get a large group of
people to sit down and look at it sometimes it takes longer, but I think you
end up with a better product.”
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