• 01 Nov 2020 09:17 AM
• 0

Joby's Patents Reveal New Details

By Kenneth I. Swartz

Still sticking to its 2023 certification date — and supporting Uber Elevate’s 2023 in-service date — Joby Aviation has been stealthily advancing its electric air taxi technology to support its first-to-market product strategy.

Founded in 2009, Joby has long been recognized by experts as the leading pioneer in the development of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology, but the company stopped sharing details of its activities in 2016 as other companies began catching up.

Although the company is valued at more than $1B — known as a unicorn — many people who have not been following their progress chronicled in the Vertical Flight Society’s Vertiflite magazine and eVTOL.news website had remained ignorant of how far ahead the company was until their announcement in January that they had received $720M in funding from companies such as Toyota.

Like many start up technology companies, these pioneers of the eVTOL industry have kept many details of their aircraft development programs very close, in order to maintain tight control of their intellectual property (IP).

However, there comes a point in the life of every tech start up needs to start filing patents to protect its proprietary technology. Recent patent application publications provide significantly more details regarding Joby’s air taxi aircraft and control systems that have only been hinted at in public forums.

With its unveiling in January (and the exclusive keynote given at the VFS Electric VTOL Symposium later that month), Joby gave the public the first glimpses into their progress. Followed by more details released through Aviation Week in September, Joby has also been revealing more information through patent filings.

In October, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published several patents, part of more than a dozen patents filed since Dec. 2019 (see below). Some of these update earlier patent applications dating back to 2015, while others are entirely new.

Most notably, the patent application for an “Aircraft Control System and Method” is probably the most revealing, since it describes Joby’s unified command system in detail and contains the first publicly available drawings of the Joby 2.0 tilt-propeller eVTOL (compare to drawings released in 2015 of the 1.0 configuration), showing it in VTOL, transition, airplane and conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) configurations, as well as drawings of a sample control inceptor.

Led by former British Royal Air Force (RAF) test pilot Justin Paines, Joby representatives have been praising unified control system installed in the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) Lockheed Martin F-35B Joint Strike Fighter to reduce pilot workload and increase safety.

Joby’s unified command system includes an input mechanism, flight processor, a control output and effectors (control surfaces, power levels) that are articulated by the control output. Joby says the system can also accommodate optional sensors that will determine the vehicle state and or/flight regime and flightpath.

The application was filed in the name of JoeBen Bevirt and Blake English. Bevirt is the founder and CEO of Joby (and 2018 recipient of the VFS Paul E. Haueter Award), and English has worked for Joby since 2016 as an engineer, test pilot and flight operations leader (and previously invented a family of radio controlled lighter-than-air flying toys that look like fish, called Air Swimmers).

Below are the patents and applications with Bevirt as an "inventor" in reverse date order, with the Oct 22 application containing the line drawings. 

Joby Aero, Inc. Patents Applications (as of Nov. 1, 2020)

Joby Aero, Inc. Patents Granted (as of Nov. 1, 2020)

JoeBen Bevirt patents with other assignees (as of Nov. 1, 2020)