Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
Everyone knows what a car is. The dominant configuration is a self-propelled, wheeled ground vehicle that carries a driver and one or more passengers, often built in large quantities on efficient production lines and usually made compliant with the regional rules of the road. Affordable, safe transportation that is there when we need it, that starts every time, is easy to own and easy to operate. The reliable family car.
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Although the explosion of interest in electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft over the past few years caught many by surprise, the development has been underway for more than a decade.
After eight months as the chief research and development officer for Hyundai’s UAM division, J. Scott Drennan has left the Uber Elevate Partner to start a consulting business — Drennan Innovations — that will provide “executive-level engineering, innovation and leadership consulting services,” with focus areas to include vertical takeoff and landing systems for advanced air mobility (the more expansive term for of “UAM”). Hyundai made the announcement on Oct. 20.
Electric conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) aircraft are anything but conventional, but include many of the same challenges as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, most especially, of course, with the power systems.
Jaunt Air Mobility is an oddball in the sea of 350-plus electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft concepts catalogued on the VFS World eVTOL Aircraft Directory (www.eVTOL.news/aircraft). It is one of the only electric gyrodyne aircraft being developed for the urban air mobility (UAM) market, and many of those who understand autorotative rotorcraft are impressed.
When flight tests of a heavy-lift helicopter revealed undesirable vibration, coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational structural dynamics (CSD) tools helped model and fix the problem. Advanced Rotorcraft Technology, Inc. (ART) in Sunnyvale, California, has built its business developing software tools that create comprehensive models for rotorcraft engineers, support flight testing and improve flight simulators.
A Sept. 25 Aviation Week cover story provided additional insights into the Joby Aviation eVTOL air taxi (see “The First Electric VTOL Unicorn: Joby Aviation,” Vertiflite, March/April 2020).
The Vertical Flight Society has been busy providing regular webinars and symposiums to help keep our members in the know and to keep advancing vertical flight. Links to past and future webinars are available at www.vtol.org/webinars
Galvanized by the promise of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, a small startup in Switzerland has set out to lead the way to a new age of self-flying aircraft by doing something no one yet knows how to do and regulators don’t know how to certify as safe. Daedalean AG is developing autonomous flight controls that rely on artificial intelligence (AI).
The Vertical Flight Society has been working to advance electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft since 2013, providing technical, professional and business resources to this burgeoning sector. As a leading advocate of the “Electric VTOL Revolution,” VFS has been holding its Electric VTOL Symposiums since 2014, started its Electric VTOL Newsletter in 2016, and launched its Electric VTOL website in 2017.
