Elroy Air joins NASA’s AAM National Campaign to help integrate autonomous cargo aircraft into US airspace
Elroy Air has become the latest company to join NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign and will help develop key guidance for urban air mobility operations.
It is currently developing the world’s first end-to-end automated VTOL aerial cargo systems and will team up with NASA to improve the safe integration of advanced autonomous cargo aircraft in US airspace.
Elroy Air joins eVTOL aircraft developers Alaka’i Technologies and Wisk, which signed information exchange agreements with NASA last year. These companies join current industry partners to prepare for the first National Campaign series, called NC‑1, beginning in 2022.
Clint Cope, Co-Founder of Elroy Air, said: “This partnership enables Elroy Air to bring its expertise in developing VTOL aerial logistics platforms together with the groups at NASA driving urban air mobility and rural air mobility to be realised in the National Airspace.
“The demonstrations we are planning and the frameworks we’ll develop and validate together will showcase that logistics will be a smart and large early use case for this new and exciting chapter in VTOL aerospace.”
This partnership between Elroy Air and NASA will initially address critical National Campaign safety scenarios, with a focus on autonomous flight and contingency management, including collision avoidance, flight path management and two-way network flight plan communications.
NASA and Elroy Air intend to demonstrate key integrated operational advanced air mobility scenarios using Elroy Air’s Chaparral aircraft, and will collaborate on flight safety reviews and technical validation approaches.
But before any vehicle could go through test flights with NASA, the project had to create a data baseline. A helicopter is being used as a surrogate UAM vehicle to gather that data through the NC Integrated Dry Run Test, which began in December 2020 and is expected to continue into March 2021.
Once the dry run tests are complete, developmental testing — set for Spring 2021 — will use Joby Aviation’s eVTOL aircraft for activities such as designing flight scenarios for the participants to fly, exercising range deployment and data-collecting protocols to prepare for NC‑1 in 2022.
Starr Ginn, Lead for NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign (NC) series, added: “The Elroy Air team impressed us with their innovative approach to automated cargo systems and technical depth in hybrid-electric VTOL vehicle development.
“Their track record designing, developing, and safely testing the Chaparral and its subsystems made them a great teaming partner. The work with Elroy Air will help accelerate the realisation of exciting new Advanced Air Mobility logistics missions.”
NASA will also seek to integrate Elroy Air’s communications systems into an airspace communications framework for UAM platforms that builds upon lessons learned from the NASA UTM (Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management) project.
With support from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NASA and Elroy Air will test and demonstrate AAM scenarios in support of middle-mile aerial logistics. NASA will provide Elroy Air with simulation scenarios and software interface details to validate connection and data formats.
Each new vehicle and operational use case added for testing gives the AAM National Campaign the opportunity to continue its mission of engaging with diverse vehicle developers and manufacturers in emerging aviation markets for personal, passenger and cargo transportation in urban, suburban, rural and regional environments.
For more information about Elroy Air, you can listen to our podcast with the company’s Head of Strategy and Business Development, Kofi Asante.