FeaturedNews

D3 Technologies joins Canadian Advanced Air Mobility Consortium’s growing ecosystem of industry experts

Ger­man urban air mobil­i­ty start­up D3 Tech­nolo­gies has become the lat­est com­pa­ny to join the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium (CAAM), and will con­tribute its pio­neer­ing work in air traf­fic con­trol automa­tion to the first air­space use case in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia.

The com­pa­ny is one of 50 mem­bers across acad­e­mia, cap­i­tal, gov­ern­ment and indus­try, which are work­ing togeth­er to cre­ate an ecosys­tem to sup­port the intro­duc­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty in Cana­da. D3 is devel­op­ing a safe, auto­mat­ed deep-tech sys­tem which cre­ates dig­i­tal roads and road signs in real-time, with the goal to pro­vide scal­able air traf­fic con­trol and enable auto­mat­ed flight.

Achim Kostron, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at D3 Tech­nolo­gies AG, said: “We high­ly val­ue the oppor­tu­ni­ty to incor­po­rate Air Traf­fic Con­trol best prac­tices and the for­ward think­ing of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in a cur­rent, rev­enue gen­er­at­ing project that will demon­strate proof of con­cept to reg­u­la­tors such as Nav Cana­da and unlock future use cas­es.

“The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary part­ner mod­els put togeth­er by CAAM will accel­er­ate AAM world­wide! We are excit­ed to be part of this progress and to enable reg­u­la­tors to eval­u­ate the options of future urban air traf­fic con­trol.”

D3’s plat­form con­sists of one or sev­er­al ground mod­ule and per-vehi­cle avion­ics, trans­ceivers and sen­sor suites. Its pro­pri­etary safe­ty archi­tec­ture and embed­ded soft­ware allow for cen­tral route plan­ning and route clear­ance, as well as addi­tion­al safe­ty func­tion­al­i­ties in the vehi­cle.

The sys­tem can accept both pilot­ed and unpilot­ed, ful­ly auto­mat­ic vehi­cles. APIs enable data exchange for appli­ca­tion builders, enabling 3rd-par­ty offer­ings. Air­space own­ers can man­age usage and its plat­form is open to all ser­vices, vehi­cle and added val­ue providers.

CAAM is cur­rent­ly work­ing on ‘Phase Two’ of its Van­cou­ver Project, fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful fea­si­bil­i­ty study in Phase One which out­lined the roadmap and triple bot­tom line analy­sis. The focus is now on devel­op­ing a path to oper­a­tional action plan this year, which will lead to the first rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ser­vices in Cana­da.

The two use cas­es it is pur­su­ing involves trans­port­ing can­cer iso­topes from Van­cou­ver to Vic­to­ria, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with found­ing CAAM mem­ber Heli­jet, and part­ner­ing with InDro Robot­ics to lever­age its exist­ing approvals for util­is­ing a Remote­ly Pilot­ed Air­craft (RPA). This will be used to deliv­er pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tion from Van­cou­ver Island to a remote Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty on Penelakut Island.

JR Ham­mond, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CAAM, said: “A scal­able air traf­fic con­trol solu­tion will be essen­tial for gov­ern­ments to ben­e­fit from AAM. We are look­ing for the air traf­fic con­trol solu­tion that has the high­est prob­a­bil­i­ty of apply­ing to an effec­tive nation­al frame­work.

“D3’s auto­mat­ed approach with high safe­ty stan­dards is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for Cana­da. We are hap­py to have their capa­bil­i­ties and exper­tise onboard the Cana­di­an AAM Mas­ter Plan Project as we strate­gize the first 20 years of AAM in Cana­da. D3 and CAAM are aligned on our think­ing con­cern­ing approach and time­line.”

Notable CAAM mem­bers include Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, Bell Tex­tron, Hori­zon Air­craft, Varon Vehi­cles, Sky­ports, Iskwew Air, The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety, the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive, the Nation­al Research Coun­cil of Cana­da, the British Colum­bia Avi­a­tion Coun­cil, Har­bour Sea­planes, Nexa Cap­i­tal Part­ners and the uni­ver­si­ties of British Colum­bia, Toron­to and Vic­to­ria.

CAAM’s goal is a zero-emis­sion AAM trans­porta­tion sys­tem in urban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties for peo­ple, goods, and ser­vices. It aims to achieve zero emis­sions in British Colum­bia by 2040.

Avatar photo

Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

eVTOL Insights is part of the Industry Insights Group. Registered in the UK. Company No: 14395769