The Latest Advanced Air Mobility News

Can UAVs Lead to Better Healthcare Outcomes?

In Milan, Italy, a group of researchers at IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele Advanced Technology in Health and Wellbeing, including Sara de Silvestri, Mirco Pagliarani, Filippo Tomasello, Diana Trojaniello, and led by Alberto Sanna, conducted a study to explore the potential for drones to deliver pharmaceuticals. The study, published by MDPI in March 2022, was part of Flying Forward 2020, “a three-year collaborative research project that will develop a new Urban…

The Flight Path to Urban Air Mobility Success May Be on the Ground

Planning for VTOLs (flying cars) is no longer a consideration for the far-off future. Today’s city planners must take into consideration urban air mobility (UAM) concerns.

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…

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