UAM - Litt oppdatering - Curt Lewis

 

Mk-5 by teTra aviation is a personal eVTOL that's already available for pre-order   tokyo based start-up teTra aviation reveals Mk-5, a fully electric personal aircraft that’s designed to be safe, quiet, and easy to manufacture. the new electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) was unveiled recently at EAA AirVenture oshkosh 2021, a week-long aviation event held in wisconsin, the US. the Mk-5 eVTOL features 32 vertical rotors on four fixed wing planes and one horizontal thrust at the rear. the aircraft cockpit fits just one person, who navigates the aircraft using a joystick and fly-by-wire electrical controls. the aircraft measures 8.62 m wide, 6.15 m long, and 2.51 m high. constructed from aluminum and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP), the Mk-5 weighs 488 kg when empty and has a maximum take-off weight of 567 kg. regarding its performance, the eVTOL is powered by a 13.5 kwh battery and boasts a top cruising speed of 160 km/h (100 mph) and a range of 160 km (100 miles). as well as being exhibited for the first time at EAA AirVenture oshkosh, the team at teTra aviation is also conducting test flights of the Mk-5 in 2021 with the aim to start delivering the personal transportation service as a kit plane as early as 2022. the Mk-5 is already available for pre-order from the company’s website here.

 

 

Joby completes 150+ mile air taxi test fligh   Santa Cruz, California-based Joby Aero Inc. has achieved an important milestone in the development of its all-electric air taxi for commercial passenger service by flying a full-size prototype vehicle more than 150 miles on a single charge, including a vertical take-off and landing. The flight was completed at Joby’s Electric Flight Base in Big Sur, California, as part of the company’s ongoing flight test campaign. The aircraft, piloted from the ground by Joby’s Chief Test Pilot Justin Paines, took off vertically before transitioning to forward flight and completing 11 laps of a predefined circuit. After more than 1 hour and 17 minutes in the air, the aircraft landed vertically, having covered a total distance of 154.6 statute miles. JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, said, “We’ve achieved something that many thought impossible with today’s battery technology. Joby’s prototype aircraft uses commercially available lithium-ion batteries that have been adapted for aerospace use. An 811 NMC cathode and a graphite anode cell were selected, following internal testing, to deliver the optimal trade-off between the specific energy required to fly the aircraft 150 miles, the specific power to take-off and land vertically, and the cycle life to deliver an affordable service. Joby researchers demonstrated in the lab that this battery is capable of more than 10,000 of our expected nominal flight cycles. The team developing Joby’s energy system is led by Jon Wagner, head of powertrain and electronics, who previously led battery engineering at Tesla. Paines, a former Royal Air Force test pilot who helped develop the controls for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter before joining Joby as its chief test pilot, added, “Achieving this milestone is an important validation of our technology and I’m incredibly proud to have played a small part in what is, to our knowledge, the longest all-electric eVTOL [electric vertical take-off and landing] flight performed to date.” Joby plans to start commercial passenger service in 2024, transporting a pilot and four passengers at speeds of up to 200mph. The company is working toward certifying its aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), having already agreed on a G-1 certification basis and been awarded a US Air Force Airworthiness Approval. The FAA requires a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate for Joby to operate its aircraft as an air taxi service in cities and communities around the United States. Alongside a Type Certificate and Production Certificate, this is one of three regulatory approvals critical to the planned launch of Joby’s all-electric aerial ridesharing service in 2024. The company is now in the first of five stages necessary for Joby to achieve Part 135 certification in 2022. In February 2021, Joby announced its intention to merge with Reinvent Technology Partners (RTP), a special-purpose acquisition company. RTP has scheduled an Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders for Aug. 5, 2021, to vote on the approval and adoption of RTP’s business combination with Joby.   SkyGrid and NASA Collaborate to Accelerate Deployment of Advanced Air Mobility  For years we have been talking about adding unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and air taxis or advanced air mobility (AAM) to the national airspace (NAS) but there are a few constraints that prevent these two nascent technologies to join their manned counterparts over controlled airspace. One of these restrictions is the fact that we cannot operate these unmanned vehicles in our skies by adding their management to the current air traffic control (ATC) infrastructure. Unmanned aircraft, especially UAVs, will have to have an independent unmanned traffic management (UTM) system and will coordinate with ATC but will not be dependent on it. Since 2018, SkyGrid, a joint venture between SparkCognition and Boeing, has developed and deployed UTM technology that aims to accelerate the massive acceptance of unmanned platforms in the NAS. Last week, SkyGrid announced it has been selected to participate in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign. SkyGrid is one of only a handful of private enterprises and institutions that have been selected for a Space Act Agreement to work with NASA to define and develop the future of AAM. SkyGrid is scheduled to participate in National Campaign-1 (NC-1) by developing future airspace system capabilities based on its AerialOS platform. NC-1 will include flight demonstrations and simulations at test sites around the country over several months in 2022.  In order to obtain more details about the announcement we reached out to Zehra Akbar, Vice President, Strategy & Operations at SkyGrid, for an exclusive interview about their technology and the reasons for NASA’s selection. “For two years now, SkyGrid, the joint venture between between Boeing and SparkCognition, has aimed at enabling a smarter airspace management system in order to fill gaps unaccounted for in conventional UTM solutions” Zehra explained. “Unless we figure out how to integrate unmanned platforms into an already crowded airspace without involving (ATC) the promise of drones and air taxis is never going to materialize.” NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), academia and the private sector are actively engaged in the issue of traffic management in the NAS in order to facilitate the incorporation of unmanned vehicles, but most approaches are using technologies that do not give the regulator the confidence for autonomous operations. “Our approach is unique, using artificial intelligence (AI) and Blockchain, we are working to produce a truly effective traffic management system that would allow for conventional operations without adding workload to existing ATC,” Zehra said. “SkyGrid is now bound to collaborate with NASA addressing pressing safety and integration challenges necessary in the development of aviation markets for passengers and cargo.” Most UTM companies today are exploring the use of ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance & Broadcasting) and many other existing technologies to accelerate acceptance. SkyGrid’s approach is different by focusing on inflight deconfliction through the use of AI, in addition to ADS-B. SkyGrid is also in partnership with Raytheon. “We are focused on developing solutions that will reduce the burden on human operators for day-to-day operations of these non-traditional aircraft. That is critical to creating an ecosystem that can scale,” Zehra said. “We have been talking a crawl-walk-run approach to testing UAM solutions and given our success, we can safely say that the day is approaching when these platforms will be mainstream.” “In order to achieve this goal, SkyGrid is focusing on critical operational challenges such as inflight strategic deconfliction, interoperability among non-traditional vehicles, trajectory planning and urban infrastructure,” Zehra concluded. “Only by cohesively addressing the numerous pieces of the UAM puzzle will we be able to tackle the incredibly complex task of mixing manned and unmanned aviation over controlled airspace.”  It is encouraging to see how these collaborations between government agencies and private companies, are advancing the cause of the full deployment of these unmanned vehicles that will eventually become part of our daily lives.