Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
In April, Bell named Jason Hurst as its new vice president of innovation, after more than 17 years at the company. Hurst is a graduate of the University of North Texas, and received a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Texas at Arlington. He joined Bell in 2002 as a project engineer on the V-22 Osprey.
EHang is a unique story of how a Chinese aviation startup developed electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft on its own. Away from the western urban air mobility (UAM) buzz, EHang today has six models of its manned and unmanned Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) designs, as well as an ecosystem for managing its aircraft. (Above: In May, EHang received the world’s first approval to conduct a pilot program for unmanned air logistics delivery. All photos via EHang.)
The US Air Force got an unexpected payoff in April from, of all things, the novel coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 led the service to officially launch Agility Prime — its initiative to boost electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and related technologies — online instead of live. Broad participation by senior military officers and government officials in the quickly organized “virtual conference” showed significant support for Agility Prime within federal ranks.
On May 21, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft startup Archer unveiled its plans and progress to the world. The company is led by co-founders Brett Adcock and Adam Goldstein, serial entrepreneurs who recently sold hiring marketplace startup Vettery to The Adecco Group for over $100M.
/Boeing-Kitty Hawk/Wisk-Boeing-KittyHawk-Front-View.jpg)
Aviation industry and finance experts say the global economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will prove deadly for many developers of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and may lead big corporate investors to slow their eVTOL ventures. But the recession will likely just speed the arrival of the inevitable.
With the dawn of a new decade, we’ve been taking a look back at how things have changed since the beginning of the 21st Century. Like everything else, this series has now taken a new perspective given the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Twenty-one teams from 10 countries were invited to participate in the GoFly Prize Final Fly Off competition on Feb. 28–29, many to showcase their “personal flyers” and several to compete for a $1M Grand Prize. The event was held at Moffett Federal Airfield at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
In 2015, NASA began a four-year project to provide guidance for low-altitude (under 500 ft/150 m) air traffic management for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). This UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project set out to define all aspects of lowaltitude traffic management including airspace management and geo-fencing, weather and wind, predict and manage congestion, terrain and man-made objects and safe separation. The program provided problem sets with increasing complexity, from unpopulated land (UTM-1) to autonomous, beyond visual line-ofsight, urban operations (UTM-4).
On Feb. 27, experts from around the country descended on Columbus, Ohio, for the Inaugural Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Symposium at The Ohio State University. With some 200 attendees representing academia, government and industry, the event was a major success and looks to be a catalyst for the future of aerial mobility in the state of Ohio. George Valcarcel, of the OSU Battelle Center for Science, Engineering and Public Policy, was symposium’s lead organizer and master of ceremonies.
We have restarted our regular series highlighting the activities of our 22 technical committees. Interested in joining or finding out more? Go to www.vtol.org/tech-committees.
The 2020 International Powered Lift Conference (IPLC) was held in January as part of the Transformative Vertical Flight 2020 Conference. This biennial conference rotates between the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Royal Aeronautical Society, SAE International and VFS.
