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In prepa­ra­tion for the impend­ing launch of eVTOLs, U.S‑based Alta­port has con­struct­ed the world’s first ver­ti­port automa­tion sys­tem (VAS) to facil­i­tate the future of trav­el by automat­ing ground infra­struc­ture oper­a­tions, reports a press release.

Alta­port, launched with­in the Phi­lo Ven­tures start­up stu­dio, was co-found­ed by for­mer Air­bus and Google employ­ees who saw the need to pre­pare today’s ground infra­struc­ture for the future of high-vol­ume eVTOL and car­go drone traf­fic.

The Alta­port plat­form over­sees a range of activ­i­ties on behalf of ground infra­struc­ture man­agers includ­ing resource man­age­ment and sched­ul­ing; and ground move­ment safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing, pas­sen­ger man­age­ment, and fee col­lec­tion. Alta­port’s plat­form both reflects and builds upon the sys­tem out­lined in NASAs VAS White Paper.

Cory Cozzens, Alta­port co-founder and Phi­lo Ven­tures found­ing part­ner, com­ment­ed, “The indus­try is severe­ly unpre­pared for the demand to come. We’re only a cou­ple years away from the intro­duc­tion of eVTOLs, but most land­ing infra­struc­ture man­agers are still using archa­ic toolsets to man­age their oper­a­tions.”

He con­tin­ued, “We’ve spent more than a decade build­ing and launch­ing oper­a­tions that are high­ly reflec­tive of what future AAM oper­a­tions will look like, giv­ing us unique insight into the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties that such oper­a­tions present.”

eVTOLs are expect­ed to begin ini­tial com­mer­cial flights by ear­ly 2025, and fore­casts by NASA, McKin­ley, Mor­gan Stan­ley, and oth­ers pre­dict that the advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) mar­ket will grow into a USD9 tril­lion mar­ket by 2050 where an indi­vid­ual ver­ti­port could serve over 100 autonomous flights per hour, in coor­di­na­tion with a net­work of as many as 300 ver­ti­ports with­in a sin­gle met­ro­pol­i­tan area.

A robust, inter­op­er­a­ble ver­ti­port oper­at­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem is vital to man­ag­ing the mag­ni­tude of inter­ac­tions to come between ver­ti­ports and oper­a­tors, as out­lined in NASA’s July 2021 report titled Ver­ti­port Automa­tion Soft­ware Archi­tec­ture and Require­ments.

Alta­port’s plat­form is cur­rent­ly used at many major heli­ports through­out Brazil, play­ing an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of tomor­row’s AAM land­ing net­work.

Brazil­ian Heli­port

Robert Car­roll, Alta­port co-founder, remarked, “Adopt­ing Alta­port’s tech­nol­o­gy ear­ly will enable land­ing loca­tions to effec­tive­ly pre­pare for the tran­si­tion to elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric avi­a­tion.” 

The release says, “While help­ing heli­ports stream­line their oper­a­tions today, the part­ner­ships also give the Alta­port team an oppor­tu­ni­ty to gath­er invalu­able real-time feed­back with­in an envi­ron­ment that is high­ly anal­o­gous to the future AAM oper­a­tions net­work.”

Grant Fisk, co-founder of Vola­tus Infra­struc­ture, explained, “Altaport’s VAS plat­form will play a crit­i­cal role in estab­lish­ing and grow­ing a safe and effi­cient eVTOL ecosys­tem. We believe its VAS is a key piece in the Vola­tus ver­ti­port pack­age, which is why we part­nered with Alta­port ear­ly on. We par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­ate how the work with heli­ports today is going to direct­ly trans­late to and ben­e­fit the eVTOL world.”

Back­ground

Using Brazil’s heli­copter mar­ket as an ana­log for advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) traf­fic, Alta­port has deployed its tech­nol­o­gy at high-vol­ume heli­pads and major air taxi oper­a­tors in São Paulo. By ear­ly 2023, Alta­port will be active at both heli­ports and gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­ports in LATAM and North Amer­i­ca, lay­ing the foun­da­tion of the AAM ground infra­struc­ture net­work need­ed.

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty in LATAM (Graph­ic Image)

Mean­while, Phi­lo Ven­tures is a Utah-based start­up stu­dio focused on build­ing new com­pa­nies from incep­tion to ear­ly oper­a­tions. Its port­fo­lio includes inno­v­a­tive busi­ness­es in var­i­ous indus­tries, includ­ing avi­a­tion, out­door hos­pi­tal­i­ty and sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://altaport.com.br/s/about-us/

(top image: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space)