FeaturedNews

Urban-Air Port and Blue Innovation to develop advanced air mobility vertiports in Japan

Urban-Air Port (UAP) has signed an agree­ment with Blue Inno­va­tion, a Japan­ese autonomous drone and robot­ics provider, that will see the two com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rate on cre­at­ing proof of con­cept (POC) for autonomous med­ical and logis­tics drone oper­a­tions.

This co-devel­op­ment of ver­ti­ports will estab­lish what is claimed to be the first advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) hub using unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs) in Japan, com­bin­ing ground and air archi­tec­ture with an autonomous dig­i­tal plat­form at the core. 

Crit­i­cal to this dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture will be Blue Innovation’s Ver­ti­port Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tem (VIMS), pow­ered by its pro­pri­etary device inte­gra­tion plat­form capa­ble of beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) autonomous con­trol of drones to per­form tasks that would nor­mal­ly require human input.

UAP and Blue Inno­va­tion are aim­ing to devel­op sev­er­al proofs of con­cept for prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion through­out Japan in trans­porta­tion of med­ical sup­plies, indus­tri­al main­te­nance, inspec­tion work and logis­tics solu­tions, paving the way for remote pilot pas­sen­ger oper­a­tions and ulti­mate­ly autonomous pas­sen­ger air trav­el.

Blue Inno­va­tion has con­duct­ed research and devel­op­ment into a ver­ti­port sys­tem since 2016 in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism of Japan and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo. 

This com­bines its dig­i­tal plat­form with infra­struc­ture design in ground­work that has already seen Blue Inno­va­tion con­duct­ing mul­ti­ple POCs through­out Japan.

Urban-Air Port CFO Adri­an Zanel­li said: “Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Blue Inno­va­tion estab­lish­es us in Japan, pro­vid­ing best-in-class tech­nol­o­gy as well as a plat­form for fur­ther devel­op­ment and coop­er­a­tion. 

“Sim­i­lar­ly, this agree­ment gives Blue Inno­va­tion broad­er reach in terms of geog­ra­phy and cus­tomers, and we look for­ward to mak­ing the strongest AAM ecosys­tem in Japan and across the world.” 

Last month, Urban-Air Port (UAP) select­ed Osprey, one of the UK’s lead­ing charge point oper­a­tors, to pro­vide charg­ing for vehi­cles at its ver­ti­port sites as part of its non-aero­nau­ti­cal rev­enue. 

Osprey will pro­vide a mul­ti-modal hub infra­struc­ture of rapid charg­ers, pow­ered by elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from 100% renew­able sources at a num­ber of sites through­out the UK that accept con­tact­less pay­ments inte­grat­ed into the UAP app. 

Before that in April, Urban-Air Port opened what it claims to be the world’s first hub for fly­ing taxis, Air-One, in Coven­try, UK – rep­re­sent­ing a blue­print for more than 200 sites to be built world­wide over the next five years.

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