Industry
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…
Slovakia’s Klein Vision AirCar Flying Car
Company Throws Down Its Gauntlet
Apparently, Stefan Klein is a man with a vision. Hence, Klein Vision, s.r.o., which has led him to develop and, now, successfully test fly his AirCar flying car. The AirCar looks similar to the Batmobile, but with wings and rudders that expand and retract to accommodate ground and air transportation. It can go from car…
Texas UASWERX
A Texas-Sized Proving Ground Where UAS Drones Can Roam the Skies
So, you’re developing an eVTOL or an hybrid eVTOL, or perhaps a flying car of a different breed altogether. You’ve designed the airframe, the interior, avionics, propulsion system, landing gear, and built your prototype — everything you need to get this unmanned bird airborne and ready for certification from the regulators. But, that’s where things…
UAM Visual Noise Pollution
What the Industry Must Consider Now
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…