Research
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…
UAM Word of the Day/Year/Decade: Lithium
eVTOLs Need Batteries; Batteries Need Lithium
In the 1967 Oscar-winning film, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman received a one-word piece of advice from his father’s friend at his high school graduation party: “Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.” The film, were it to be remade today, might give a recent college grad a different one-word recommendation: Lithium. (If a few words of…
Are Ornithopters a Birdbrained Idea or Smart UAM?
eVTOLs with Flapping Wings – Great, Big Wings (and Little Ones Too!)
When you think “Renaissance Man,” you will likely conjure Leonardo da Vinci. Sculptor-extraordinaire, painter of masterworks, and yes, even a designer for a flying machine centuries before the Wright Brothers cracked the code to modern aviation. Leonardo imagined and sketched flying machines with the pilot prone, standing, and using his arm and leg strength to…
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…
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…
Public Acceptance of Flying Cars
What's it going to take for UAM to take off?
Developers of flying cars (or eVTOLs, if you will) predict they will have vehicles ready for certification by 2023. Many of them are looking for governments to certify their aircraft by 2025. Some analysts predict nearly 500,000 air taxis around the globe will be ferrying passengers by 2040. After conquering the technological and regulatory challenges,…