United States Navy gives Overair an SBIR contact to continue advancing its individual blade control technology

Overair has been award­ed a Small Busi­ness Inno­v­a­tive Research (SBIR) con­tract from the US Navy, to fur­ther devel­op the high-integri­ty indi­vid­ual blade con­trol (IBC) tech­nol­o­gy inte­grat­ed into its But­ter­fly eVTOL air­craft.

Under the agree­ment, Overair will advance the IBC sys­tem for poten­tial Navy use with a spe­cif­ic focus on safe­ty-crit­i­cal archi­tec­ture.

The inno­v­a­tive IBC sys­tem will enable seg­ment-lead­ing per­for­mance for Overair’s But­ter­fly and, in the future, may also pro­vide new fron­tiers for the U.S. Navy, which is focus­ing its sup­port on Overair’s tra­jec­to­ry-based con­trol scheme in con­junc­tion with a fault tol­er­ant, mul­ti-chan­nel dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work. The research and tech­nol­o­gy is expect­ed to help future mil­i­tary rotor­craft become more dam­age-resis­tant and reli­able in com­bat.

Overair CEO, Ben Tign­er, said: “This SBIR award is impor­tant val­i­da­tion that our IBC tech­nol­o­gy is tru­ly ground­break­ing and will be a key con­trib­u­tor to Butterfly’s excep­tion­al, mar­ket-lead­ing per­for­mance and capa­bil­i­ties. We look for­ward to work­ing with the Navy to advance this tech­nol­o­gy in rela­tion to mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions as safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty are of utmost impor­tance for crit­i­cal mis­sions.”

Overair’s IBC tech­nol­o­gy sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces vibra­tion, extends com­po­nent life, and improves safe­ty and ride qual­i­ty. Overair’s But­ter­fly eVTOL enables full-author­i­ty IBC, a fea­ture absent in cur­rent cer­ti­fied com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary rotor­craft. Paired with its advanced Opti­mum Speed Tiltro­tor (OSTR) propul­sion sys­tem-rotors, But­ter­fly also deliv­ers sig­nif­i­cant noise reduc­tion.

NAVAIR Aero­me­chan­ics Senior Engi­neer, Matt Rhine­hart, added: “The list of poten­tial ben­e­fits derived from IBC tech­nol­o­gy is long, but the chal­lenges of prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion have, to date, pre­vent­ed its adop­tion into pro­duc­tion rotor­craft. This SBIR is intend­ed to help move the nee­dle towards the real­i­sa­tion of IBC in the next gen­er­a­tion of rotor­craft.”

SBIR pro­grams, estab­lished in 1982, are high­ly com­pet­i­tive and cov­er all indus­tries. Awards are avail­able to for-prof­it com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in the U.S. that have no more than 500 employ­ees. The pro­gram stim­u­lates tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, research, and devel­op­ment in areas crit­i­cal to Amer­i­can pri­or­i­ties and advance­ment.

Spun out of Karem Air­craft in 2020, Overair announced the design of its vehi­cle, But­ter­fly in 2021. The air­craft’s pro­pri­etary tech­nolo­gies, derived from the Overair team’s decades of aero­space expe­ri­ence, cre­ate crit­i­cal pow­er reserves using today’s com­mer­cial­ly avail­able bat­tery cells, which trans­late into advances in safe­ty and a supe­ri­or expe­ri­ence for rid­ers and com­mu­ni­ties.

Overair has oper­at­ing part­ner­ships with com­pa­nies such as Han­wha Sys­tems and Bris­tow Group, and the team com­plet­ed its full-scale propul­sion test­ing in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022.