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MCLEAN, Virginia — NEXA Advisors and the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) have formed an equity partnership in UAM Geomatics, Inc., whose purpose is to promote the development and utilization of eVTOL aircraft, including accelerated investment into related supply chains.
Three dozen of the world’s leading electric aircraft developers and technology experts will be speaking at the CAFE Foundation’s 14th Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium (EAS) which will be held online for the first time on July 28-30, 2020.
Electric and hybrid electric powered aircraft have the potential to significantly reduce air transportation costs, carbon emissions and community noise and enable new aviation markets.
On March 9, a week before the 2nd VFS “Workshop on Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) Infrastructure for Urban Air Mobility (UAM)” was to kick off at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, the state governor declared a state of emergency and the university closed its campus.
At the 7th Annual Electric VTOL Symposium in January 2020, the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) helped launch the eVTOL Writers Group. In addition to other activities, VFS has supported the group with a series of online interviews with leading eVTOL developers. The following interviews are available to the public.
Twenty-one teams from 10 countries were invited to participate in the GoFly Prize Final Fly Off competition on Feb. 28–29, many to showcase their “personal flyers” and several to compete for a $1M Grand Prize. The event was held at Moffett Federal Airfield at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
In 2015, NASA began a four-year project to provide guidance for low-altitude (under 500 ft/150 m) air traffic management for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). This UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project set out to define all aspects of lowaltitude traffic management including airspace management and geo-fencing, weather and wind, predict and manage congestion, terrain and man-made objects and safe separation. The program provided problem sets with increasing complexity, from unpopulated land (UTM-1) to autonomous, beyond visual line-ofsight, urban operations (UTM-4).
On Feb. 27, experts from around the country descended on Columbus, Ohio, for the Inaugural Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Symposium at The Ohio State University. With some 200 attendees representing academia, government and industry, the event was a major success and looks to be a catalyst for the future of aerial mobility in the state of Ohio. George Valcarcel, of the OSU Battelle Center for Science, Engineering and Public Policy, was symposium’s lead organizer and master of ceremonies.
We have restarted our regular series highlighting the activities of our 22 technical committees. Interested in joining or finding out more? Go to www.vtol.org/tech-committees.
The 2020 International Powered Lift Conference (IPLC) was held in January as part of the Transformative Vertical Flight 2020 Conference. This biennial conference rotates between the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the Royal Aeronautical Society, SAE International and VFS.
There were plenty of noteworthy announcements about electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developments leading up to the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest consumer products trade show, held Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada (see for example, “The First Electric VTOL Unicorn: Joby Aviation,” Vertiflite Magazine, Mar/Apr 2020, pg. 48).
The Transformative Vertical Flight 2020 event in San Jose, California, in mid-January, featured a wide range of sessions and panel discussions that covered the breadth and depth of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) progress and capabilities (see “Transformative Vertical Flight 2020,” pg. 38). One such panel covered the use of eVTOL technology for cargo.
