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Volocopter partners with Near Earth Autonomy to enable BVLOS capabilities for its VoloDrone eVTOL

Volo­copter is work­ing with Near Earth Auton­o­my to enable beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) oper­a­tions for its eVTOL Volo­Drone, with a demon­stra­tion planned in Munich next year.

Togeth­er, both com­pa­nies will aim to estab­lish stan­dard­ised BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties for Volo­Drone mis­sions with­in the busi­ness-to-busi­ness trans­port sec­tor. They will adapt their auton­o­my tech­nol­o­gy to seam­less­ly inte­grate with the over­all eVTOL archi­tec­ture, while address­ing the chal­lenges of weight, pow­er, and cost. To start, sub­scale test­beds will be equipped with Near Earth Autonomy’s tech­nol­o­gy and Volocopter’s con­trol sys­tems to test BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties in a con­trolled envi­ron­ment.  

After adapt­ing and test­ing the BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties on sub­scale plat­forms to lever­age the Volo­copter spe­cif­ic flight char­ac­ter­is­tics, the same tech­nol­o­gy will be used on the full-sized Volo­Drone to pre­pare for ful­ly autonomous flight for future logis­tics use.

Christophe Hom­met, Volo­copter’s Chief Engi­neer for Volo­Drone, said: “We are very excit­ed to work togeth­er with the lead­ing play­er in the aer­i­al auton­o­my indus­try. Near Earth Auton­o­my has years of expe­ri­ence, shown real results, and is going to help our Volo­Drone stay ahead of the curve with autonomous capa­bil­i­ties.”

The Ger­man start­up — which recent­ly announced its long-range eVTOL air­craft, Volo­Con­nect, has more than a decade of flight expe­ri­ence and con­duct­ed over 1,000 flight tests for this project. The Volo­Drone can car­ry a 200kg pay­load 40 km and has been designed to safe­ly trans­port car­go where con­ven­tion­al trans­port is lim­it­ed, due to topog­ra­phy, reg­u­la­tions or con­gest­ed traf­fic.

While Near Earth Auton­o­my has car­ried out 3,500 flights and record­ed more than 2,000 flight hours of its auton­o­my sys­tem across var­i­ous air­craft types, sizes and envi­ron­ment in the last eight years. It has already inte­grat­ed its BVLOS auton­o­my sys­tems with full-scale heli­copters, both in pilot­ed and remote­ly pilot­ed con­fig­u­ra­tions.

San­jiv Singh, CEO of Near Earth Auton­o­my, said: “Volocopter’s track record, unique safe­ty design, and vision have estab­lished it as the leader in the eVTOL indus­try. We look for­ward to prov­ing auton­o­my sys­tems for their air­craft. Our shared vision of the future, and safe­ty as an inte­gral part of it, makes this an ide­al part­ner­ship.”

Volo­copter is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for its com­mer­cial launch of UAM ser­vices with­in the next three years. These ser­vices plan to func­tion with­in a UAM ecosys­tem which will con­sist of its eVTOL air taxis, VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect, Volo­Port infra­struc­ture and dig­i­tal con­nec­tive plat­form, VoloIQ.

The com­pa­ny has said BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties would help it achieve autonomous aer­i­al car­go trans­port. and esti­mat­ed the pro­ject­ed mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for Volo­Drone ser­vices to be approx­i­mate­ly $120 bil­lion by 2035.

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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.

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