Skyway and Moonware partner to advance automated ground solutions

Sky­way and Moon­ware will accel­er­ate ground infra­struc­ture readi­ness for advanced aer­i­al mobil­i­ty, with Sky­way offer­ing air traf­fic nav­i­ga­tion and ver­ti­port air­space man­age­ment ser­vices while Moon­ware offers auto­mat­ed avi­a­tion ground oper­a­tions through its AI-pow­ered soft­ware and autonomous ground vehi­cles.

Moonware’s tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) ser­vice providers with sys­tems that effi­cient­ly man­age air­field ground oper­a­tions to safe­ly meet flight through­put require­ments.

The part­ner­ship aims to dig­i­tal­ly inte­grate ground oper­a­tions into traf­fic sys­tems, with Sky­way’s ver­ti­port devel­op­ment to pro­vide reli­able UAM infra­struc­ture as well as bring­ing the next evo­lu­tion in auto­mat­ed traf­fic ser­vices to air­line oper­a­tors.

The prin­ci­pal chal­lenges involved with eVTOL ground oper­a­tions are the intrin­sic lim­i­ta­tions of self-taxi­ing air­craft, due to bat­tery con­straints and range require­ments. As more ver­ti­ports are devel­oped and brought onto the flight net­work, adopt­ing stan­dard­ised sys­tems can scale across a wide vari­ety of oper­a­tional require­ments.

Moonware’s Air­side HALO oper­at­ing sys­tem is an app-based tool designed to coor­di­nate and auto­mate avi­a­tion ground ser­vices with fea­tures such as auto­mat­ed crew sched­ul­ing and dis­patch­ing, GSE asset allo­ca­tion, and real-time air­side vis­i­bil­i­ty.

HALO will enable Sky­way to dig­i­tal­ly inte­grate ground oper­a­tions into its ver­ti­port man­age­ment sys­tem, allow­ing the air traf­fic oper­a­tion cen­tre to see crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion.

Moon­ware CEO Javier Vidal said: “This part­ner­ship enables ground oper­a­tions to be dig­i­tal­ly inte­grat­ed into traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems from the very start, and equips oper­a­tors with a tool that will stream­line their air­side work­flow.”

Moon­ware and Sky­way will also estab­lish require­ments to deploy Moonware’s ATLAS autonomous and elec­tric push­back vehi­cle, to taxi eVTOLs in ver­ti­ports oper­at­ing in Sky­way’s net­work.

ATLAS will enable quick and safe air­craft trans­fers to park­ing stands, pro­vid­ing air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers with an extend­ed range through engine-off taxi­ing oper­a­tions, reduc­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion and ver­ti­port noise.

Sky­way CEO Clif­ford Cruz added: “Ver­ti­port uptime and organ­i­sa­tion of assets via Moonware’s tech­nolo­gies will increase Sky­way’s facil­i­ty oper­a­tion offer­ings val­ue propo­si­tion.”

By part­ner­ing with Moon­ware, Skyway’s nav­i­ga­tion ser­vices will extend through the entire char­ter expe­ri­ence with safe and reli­able ser­vices to tack­le the chal­lenges of the indus­try and pave the way for a seam­less pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence.

In Novem­ber 2020, Moon­ware launched as an inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny to pro­vide soft­ware as a ground han­dling ser­vice and help auto­mate air­ports and Sky­ports for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions.

Moon­ware launch­es its autonomous ground han­dling ser­vice, with plans for the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket

Last month, Siemens and Sky­way start­ed work­ing to deter­mine the elec­tri­cal and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port ver­ti­port oper­a­tions, with both com­pa­nies research­ing the ener­gy demands and devel­op­ing a sus­tain­able elec­tri­cal sup­ply, stan­dard charg­ing process­es, and a sys­tem of sys­tems to sup­port air­craft oper­a­tions.

Ver­ti­port oper­a­tion to be boost­ed by col­lab­o­ra­tion between Siemens and Sky­way