MightyFly Awarded USD150,000 by MMFP to Perform Autonomous Flight Demonstrations in Michigan

MightyFly, a man­u­fac­tur­er and oper­a­tor of long-range, autonomous, hybrid eVTOL car­go air­craft, was award­ed a USD150,000 grant from the Michi­gan Mobil­i­ty Fund­ing Plat­form (MMFP), last month, to per­form autonomous car­go deliv­ery flight demon­stra­tions in the state of Michi­gan, reports a press release.

This is expect­ed to be “the first pub­lic demon­stra­tion of an autonomous, fixed-wing elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft show­cas­ing 100 pounds of car­go deliv­er­ies,” states the release.

Dur­ing these tri­al flights, per­formed with the sup­port of the Michi­gan Office of Future Mobil­i­ty and Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion (OFME), “MightyFly will show­case the capa­bil­i­ties of its third-gen­er­a­tion autonomous car­go air­craft with 100 pounds of car­go capac­i­ty and a 6 ft by 19 inch by 18 inch car­go bay,” explains the release, “capa­ble of car­ry­ing up to 212 small USPS pack­ages.”

Many dif­fer­ent Michi­gan busi­ness­es from man­u­fac­tur­ing, auto­mo­tive and logis­tics to retail, chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal could great­ly ben­e­fit from MightyFly’s inno­v­a­tive form of trans­porta­tion. Such busi­ness­es require “express logis­tics, with fast, effi­cient and afford­able same-day ship­ping ser­vices.” The car­go drone com­pa­ny not only offers cost sav­ings, but rapid deliv­er­ies of cru­cial ship­ments for med­ical treat­ments, as well as quick replace­ments of fast-sell­ing con­sumer goods to retail­ers.

The MMFP grant pro­gram is man­aged by the OFME and is part of a statewide strat­e­gy to ensure Michi­gan remains “a glob­al leader in the future of mobil­i­ty.”

Man­al Habib

The pro­gram was launched by the Michi­gan Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (MEDC) and the Michi­gan Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (MDOT) to “catal­yse and scale new mobil­i­ty solu­tions that improve envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty by encour­ag­ing EV adop­tion and charg­ing infra­struc­ture build­out, increas­ing access to afford­able and reli­able trans­porta­tion options and mod­ernising exist­ing trans­porta­tion sys­tems for Michi­gan­ders.”

The OFME has pre­vi­ous­ly part­nered with the Michi­gan Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tems Con­sor­tium (MUASC) to facil­i­tate test­ing of autonomous air­craft in the State. The OFME works across state gov­ern­ment, reg­u­la­tors, acad­e­mia and pri­vate indus­try to build a robust ecosys­tem of part­ners capa­ble of lead­ing the adop­tion and use of trans­for­ma­tive mobil­i­ty solu­tions like that of MightyFly.

Man­al Habib, CEO of MightyFly, com­ment­ed, “We are excit­ed to be the first large, autonomous, fixed-wing eVTOL car­go deliv­ery com­pa­ny to demon­strate how autonomous aer­i­al expe­dit­ed logis­tics solu­tions will bet­ter serve Michi­gan­ders.”

Char­lie Tyson, Tech­nol­o­gy Acti­va­tion Man­ag­er of OFME, added, “Michi­gan is unique­ly posi­tioned to sup­port test­ing, devel­op­ment, and deploy­ment of new tech­nolo­gies that will lead to more afford­able, acces­si­ble trans­porta­tion solu­tions and we are excit­ed to sup­port MightyFly through the MMFP pro­gram.”

Back­ground

MightyFly has a car­go capac­i­ty of 100 and 500 lbs, a range of 600 miles and speed of 150 mph. The drone pre­vi­ous­ly per­formed autonomous test flights of its first and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion air­craft in Cal­i­for­nia, com­plet­ing over 100 autonomous hov­er flights.

Both autonomous car­go air­craft received the Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate (SAC) from the FAA. Cen­to (the sec­ond-gen) received the FAA’s Cer­tifi­cate of Autho­ri­sa­tion (COA) for long-range flights, pro­vid­ing MightyFly with 230 sq miles of air­space for flight test­ing. The third-gen­er­a­tion air­craft is sched­uled to under­take exten­sive test­ing in Cal­i­for­nia before the Michi­gan flight demon­stra­tions begin in 2024.

For more Infor­ma­tion

www.mightyfly.com

https://www.michiganbusiness.org/mobility-funding/

https://www.michiganbusiness.org/ofme/

(Images Cred­it: MightyFly)