The Latest Advanced Air Mobility News

eVTOLs Need Lithium Batteries

Flying cars will likely be powered by lithium batteries. How these batteries will be safely and economically recycled remains to be seen.

Drone Alone: Advanced Air Mobility Advances Pilotlessly

During the EnRicH 2021 European Robotics Hackathon, the San Antonio, Texas-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) successfully demonstrated an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that fully autonomously explored and mapped the interior of the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant located in Zwentendorf an der Donau, Austria. The Zwentendorf plant is the world’s only nuclear facility that has been fully built but never activated. This makes…

U-Space – The EU’s Evolving Plan for UAVs and UAM

The Single European Sky Air Traffic Modernization Research (SESAR) Project is working to develop policies to facilitate the European Commission’s Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy. SESAR will define, deploy, and develop technologies to create an air traffic management system throughout the European Union (EU) for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including drones and air taxis. First…

UAM Autonomy: What It’s Going to Take

Autonomy is not automation. Consider this: We all want autonomy—the power to control our lives; none of us wants to be automated. The Society of Automobile Engineers International (SAE) has defined six levels of autonomy, ranging from no automation (Level 0) to full automation (Level 5) for cars. These standards have been adopted by the…

Urban Air Mobility Meets [Native] American Ingenuity

Like many Native American people, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) maintains a long-held respect for the earth and sky. But perhaps unlike some other tribes, the CNO also has a strong understanding of American-style capitalism, especially as a means to communal economic prosperity. Following in the tradition of the Wright Brothers, several years ago,…

eVTOL, UAS, and Now, Another UAM Acronym: LiDAR

When the UAM revolution takes off, there will be no shortage of acronyms. There’s already eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles), UAS (unmanned aerial systems), UAM (urban air mobility). Now add one more: LiDAR. A 50-year-old technology, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology, is expected to play a key role in the development of…

NASA, Wisk, and Alaka’i Form UAM Partnership

As part of its Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign (NC), NASA announced on November 16, 2020, that it had signed information exchange agreements with UAM vehicle developers, Mountain View, California-based Wisk and Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based Alaka’i Technologies. The agreements will facilitate the integration of eVTOLs and hybrid VTOLs into the U.S. national airspace. Working with…

UAM Visual Noise Pollution

With some estimates predicting as many as a half million eVTOLs, hybrid VTOLs, and other urban air vehicles traversing the world’s metropolitan skyways within a decade, a challenge looms for UAM aircraft developers and would-be operators that none alone can overcome: visual noise pollution. Airports have faced the issue of noise abatement from aircraft taking…

Advanced Air Mobility, Canadian Style

Canadians have a reputation . . . for being polite, bilingual, sort of British, sort of French, and perhaps most famously, for not being Americans. So, it should come as no surprise that their approach to urban air mobility is unique. They’re among those calling it advanced air mobility (AAM), but one wonders how long…

AFWERX Shifts UAM Initiative Into High Gear

AFWERX, the U.S. Air Force unit that fosters innovation and connections between private industry, academia, and the military, is recommending more than 250 proposals it received in response to its X20D Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), Open Topic solicitation regarding its “flying car” subject. The group is on track to be “the largest single cohort…

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