Jump Aero and Oklahoma State University receive Phase I STTR contract from Agility Prime program

Jump Aero Incor­po­rat­ed has been award­ed a Phase I Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) research con­tract, in part­ner­ship with Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty, from the U.S. Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime pro­gram.

The com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing its JA1 eVTOL air­craft to help get first respon­ders to the scene of a med­ical emer­gency as quick­ly as pos­si­ble Its launch prod­uct aims to safe­ly trans­port them at top speeds of 200mph, and land safe­ly in an urbanised envi­ron­ment.

The research con­duct­ed as part of this con­tract will help lever­age the high per­for­mance of its sub­scale tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, as a low-cost plat­form for the cal­i­bra­tion of nav­i­ga­tion­al aids (NAVAID) and instru­ment land­ing sys­tems (ILS).

Carl Diet­rich, Founder & Pres­i­dent of Jump Aero Incor­po­rat­ed, said: “Jump Aero is thrilled to have been select­ed for this Phase I con­tract through the Agili­ty Prime pro­gram.  We look for­ward to work­ing with our part­ners at Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty to mature these excit­ing new tech­nolo­gies.” – Carl Diet­rich, Founder & Pres­i­dent of Jump Aero Incor­po­rat­ed

ILS sys­tems are cal­i­brat­ed with an exten­sive instru­ment pack­age aboard large, manned air­craft by the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion’s (FAA) Flight Inspec­tion Divi­sion. 

Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty has been work­ing with the FAA to eval­u­ate the poten­tial of drone tech­nol­o­gy in com­bi­na­tion with soft­ware defined radios to reduce the cost and increase the safe­ty of NAVAID/ILS inspec­tion. 

Fly­ing a drone on final approach would typ­i­cal­ly require run­way clo­sure, and Jump Aero says its high-per­for­mance sub­scale demon­stra­tor could poten­tial­ly allow ILS cal­i­bra­tion by unmanned air­craft, with­out the need to shut down an active approach.

This is because the JA1U tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor is capa­ble of fly­ing approach­es at speeds that would enable seam­less inte­gra­tion with exist­ing air traf­fic at air­ports. 

And bypass­ing the need to close a run­way to achieve the costs sav­ings of using a drone, there is the poten­tial for these ILS cal­i­bra­tions to be much more prac­ti­cal and cost effec­tive for both the FAA and the Air Force in future.

Pro­fes­sor Jamey D. Jacob, Direc­tor of OSU Unmanned Sys­tems Research Insti­tute, said: “USRI is excit­ed to sup­port Jump Aero on this effort and work with their tal­ent­ed team. The Jump JA1 con­cept is a unique approach that will pro­vide many ben­e­fits to manned and unmanned flight alike and we are excit­ed to help see it to fruition.”

Found­ed by expe­ri­enced avi­a­tion entre­pre­neurs, Jump Aero’s mis­sion is to lever­age elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft tech­nol­o­gy to cut emer­gency response times in half. It announced its advi­so­ry board mem­bers last year, with exper­tise in sec­tors such as aero­space design, embed­ded soft­ware, entre­pre­neur­ship and finance.

First respon­der organ­i­sa­tions inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about its high-per­for­mance life­sav­ing tech­nol­o­gy can vis­it www.jumpaero.com.