North Carolina General Assembly awards AeroX $5 million grant for Advanced Air Mobility System

The North Car­oli­na Gen­er­al Assem­bly (NCGA) has award­ed AeroX a $5 mil­lion grant to design and devel­op an urban advanced air mobil­i­ty sys­tem in Win­ston-Salem and Forsyth Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na.

Grant funds will flow to AeroX through the North Car­oli­na Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion Divi­sion of Avi­a­tion, which admin­is­ters state and fed­er­al avi­a­tion grant fund­ing for the state and has been a nation­al leader in demon­strat­ing and enabling gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial use of unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAS, or drones).

The NCGA grant will allow AeroX to take a major step for­ward toward build­ing the air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem that will allow unmanned and manned air­craft to fly safe­ly in the low-alti­tude air space (below 400 feet) in which UAS oper­ate.

Michael Baugh­an, AeroX board mem­ber and chair of the AeroX Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, said: “Once again, North Car­oli­na pol­i­cy­mak­ers have tak­en the bold move to invest in aviation’s next fron­tier.

“|These funds will help us begin build­ing the infra­struc­ture required to ush­er in this new era of avi­a­tion, sup­port­ing exist­ing indus­tries and open­ing up whole new areas of the econ­o­my.”

AeroX is a non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion of busi­ness, gov­ern­ment and com­mu­ni­ty part­ners focused on facil­i­tat­ing the safe and effi­cient com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of these UAS tech­nolo­gies in Forsyth Coun­ty.

It aims to cap­i­talise on North Carolina’s promi­nence as a UAS inno­va­tion leader by cre­at­ing a nation­al mod­el ecosys­tem for advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM), a test­bed for pio­neer­ing com­pa­nies seek­ing to lever­age these emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to grow their com­pa­nies.

Forsyth Coun­ty is well posi­tioned to achieve this goal. Rou­tine com­mer­cial drone deliv­er­ies are already under way in the coun­ty by UPS Flight For­ward, which is deliv­er­ing med­ical pack­ages across the Atri­um Health Wake For­est Bap­tist Med­ical Cen­ter cam­pus.

Novant Health, which is con­duct­ing AAM oper­a­tions in North Car­oli­na, pro­vides guid­ance as a mem­ber of the AeroX board. Smith Reynolds Air­port is a Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion-des­ig­nat­ed nation­al air­port ide­al for test­ing AAM solu­tions. Local busi­ness sup­port organ­i­sa­tions are avail­able to pro­vide tech­ni­cal assis­tance to help com­pa­nies in the sec­tor start­up and grow.

Vis­it ncaerox.com for more infor­ma­tion.