Highlight
U.S.A., Japan Gearing Up for Urban Air Mobility
News on the Fly: Los Angeles, Japan Airlines, Springfield, Ohio + AFWERX Lab
Angelenos have long had a love affair with their cars (take a gander at the 405 Freeway or Highway 101 any time, day or night). Imagine how they’re gonna feel about flying cars. That’s exactly what Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti did on 23 December 2020, when he announced the Urban Air Mobility Partnership between…
Game of Drones: How eVTOLs and UAS Will Change UAM and Our Lives
From Agriculture to Zoology, a World of Mobile Opportunities
While most of the general public’s attention is focused on the prospect of flying cars, (“Damn you, Jetsons!”), much of business and industry (along with the military) remain focused on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), AKA drones, and how they can contribute to an enterprise’s bottom line by taking airborne pilots, photographers, and/or videographers out 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…
eVTOL UAVs to Take on Jaws as Shark-Spotters
Think of it as a sort of "Shark Eye for the Beach Guys (and gals)."
It’s been 45 years since film director Steven Spielberg frightened beachgoers and boaters out of the oceans with his iconic, shark-fest thriller, Jaws. Now, scientists at the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) may have found a way, using artificial intelligence (AI) and UAVs (drones), to spot sharks, track…
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…