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INTERVIEW: AIBOT and Honeywell provide further insight about their new partnership after signing agreement at Dubai Airshow

It’s been more than a week since the Dubai Air­show and the AAM mar­ket has been quick to praise the event as yet anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring the indus­try togeth­er and fos­ter mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions.

While the week was full of new part­ner­ships being announced between estab­lished com­pa­nies, it was also the chance for eVTOL Insights to con­nect with those only just embark­ing on their jour­ney towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

One of these com­pa­nies is AIBOT, a Cal­i­for­nia-based start­up co-found­ed by Jer­ry Wang, RK Jia and ZK Jia. Frus­trat­ed by the monot­o­nous, inef­fi­cient, and far from envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly options in short and medi­um-dis­tance trans­porta­tion, the three reimag­ined trav­el.

They envi­sion a safe, sim­ple-to-oper­ate air­craft for every­day use and launched AIBOT in 2022, mark­ing the begin­ning of a jour­ney aimed at dis­rupt­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of mobil­i­ty and rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing how we per­ceive and expe­ri­ence every­day trav­el.

Dur­ing the Dubai Air­show, AIBOT announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hon­ey­well, which will be pro­vid­ing its advanced flight con­trol sys­tem for AIBOT’s manned air­craft.

eVTOL Insights was giv­en an exclu­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk in more detail to the AIBOT team and Tay­lor Alber­stadt, Honeywell’s Senior Direc­tor, Glob­al Sales & Account Man­age­ment, Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.

What can you tell me about your com­pa­ny?

Jer­ry Wang: “We are a Cal­i­for­nia-based aiEV­TOL com­pa­ny and have the vision to dis­rupt the next gen­er­a­tion of mobil­i­ty, trans­form­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try to ush­er in the B2C era, mak­ing the free­dom of flight an acces­si­ble real­i­ty any­time, any­where, for every house­hold.

“There is a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty in this indus­try that will last the next 20 to 50 years. We believe that with our Ultra-High Tech and Hyper-Per­for­mance aiEV­TOL and part­ners such as Hon­ey­well, we’re able to build some­thing togeth­er that can real­ly change how peo­ple move, trans­port, and live. It will change things in a major way.”

What can you tell us about AIBOT’s flag­ship prod­uct?

John Clark­son, Chief Engi­neer, AIBOT: “Our first manned air­craft is 7,000 lbs. and has eight- motors. We did a lot of sub­scales, and one of those sub­scales is going to become an unmanned com­mer­cial prod­uct lat­er next year. It will also be used as a devel­op­ment tool for our manned prod­uct, where we’ve utilised Honeywell’s exper­tise and its flight con­trol sys­tem.”

What does your cur­rent roadmap look like?

JW: “This is a very excit­ing devel­op­ment. We formed the com­pa­ny about two years ago, but we’re able to move very, very fast. We start­ed with a small 20-pound pro­to­type, then moved to a 55-pound pro­to­type, then to a 500-pound pro­to­type. We’ve now built a 700lb pro­duc­tion-intent ver­sion as an unmanned com­mer­cial air­craft, which will be able to ful­ly tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal take­off to hor­i­zon­tal flight and then back to a ver­ti­cal land­ing.

“We have been prov­ing our soft­ware and hard­ware tech­nol­o­gy capa­bil­i­ties and next year, we want to launch a pre-pro­duc­tion air­craft that will not only help the con­tin­u­ous devel­op­ment of our flag­ship manned prod­uct, but we also see a com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate ear­ly rev­enue and adapt the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of unmanned, com­mer­cial projects. With the right exe­cu­tion and with good part­ners such as Hon­ey­well, we will make it hap­pen.”

As well as pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing oper­a­tions, will you be look­ing to utilise any oth­er use cas­es?

JW: “Gen­er­al­ly yes, because we see a lot of par­al­lels between manned and unmanned vehi­cle devel­op­ment and even pro­duc­tion. “You need to define your prod­uct specif­i­cal­ly to use cas­es. We have a very good under­stand­ing of user needs and our prod­ucts are tai­lor-made for those com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties. We know
we can make some­thing hap­pen to pro­duce val­ue.”

How impor­tant is it to have a brand like Hon­ey­well sup­port­ing you on this ven­ture?

JW: “We are excit­ed to col­lab­o­rate with Hon­ey­well. As the lead sup­pli­er in the gen­er­al avi­a­tion space and using the tech­nol­o­gy they pro­vide us with fits per­fect­ly with the direc­tion of the prod­uct we’re build­ing. We’re also hap­py to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to the advance­ment and pro­mo­tion of the over­all AAM mar­ket.”

Tay­lor, can you tell us from Honeywell’s per­spec­tive, how you will be sup­port­ing AIBOT?

TA: “We’ll be sup­port­ing AIBOT with our flight con­trols hard­ware and soft­ware, which will sup­port the work they’re doing for the MA7. But if we take a step back, pri­or to sign­ing the con­tract there’s the dat­ing stage, and we found a com­pa­ny which shares a lot of our ideals; very tech­nol­o­gy for­ward, focused on sus­tain­abil­i­ty — that aligns with what we want to do in this phase.

“When we think about the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try, it’s a very big pie that needs to be eat­en. So, for AIBOT to come to the table is a great thing for Hon­ey­well and the mar­ket too. We’re very for­tu­nate to be work­ing with them, with not only core tech­nol­o­gy that we bring from lega­cy aero­space, but this is tech­nol­o­gy we’ve worked on apply­ing to oth­er AAM vehi­cles over the past few years.

“So they are able to stand on the shoul­ders of folks who have come before them. There will be the ear­ly entrants which will have a more chal­leng­ing path to mar­ket and then you have this sec­ond wave that comes after­wards and ben­e­fits from all this good­ness.

“Through exist­ing devel­op­ment pro­grams, Hon­ey­well has been able to see ben­e­fits and pos­si­ble risk areas through some of the work done already, and apply some of the lessons learnt with AIBOT.”

How will AIBOT be util­is­ing Honeywell’s exper­tise going for­ward?

JC: “Work­ing with Hon­ey­well will def­i­nite­ly accel­er­ate our mar­ket launch and enhance prod­uct per­for­mance. As well as the flight con­trol sys­tems, they have a wealth of prod­ucts we can tap into, such as actu­a­tion and cock­pit suite for exam­ple. All of this aids our jour­ney.

“We’ve talked about the lead­ers in the field who are going through this chal­lenge. The first cut is always the hard­est and we’re ben­e­fit­ing a lot from that. So, with Hon­ey­well, we can cher­ry-pick the best of their prod­ucts, which will help us on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion jour­ney that we’re going to under­take. To have prod­ucts that work well and have already been inte­grat­ed into air­craft.

TA: “Our cus­tomers have require­ments and they’re look­ing for tech­nol­o­gy that meets them. But beyond that, they are look­ing for peo­ple who they can work with, who they can rely on and who can sup­port this jour­ney beyond just being a provider of hard­ware soft­ware solu­tions.

“That’s where Hon­ey­well real­ly likes to dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves to say ‘we’re here for you, to walk along this jour­ney to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.’ It’s work­ing togeth­er to under­stand what end mar­kets look like, going to the reg­u­la­tors joint­ly to talk about cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards to ensure that the tech­nol­o­gy we’re devel­op­ing is going to meet today’s and future stan­dards in regards to reg­u­la­tion; open­ing doors to addi­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions that can be had with oper­a­tors and end users.

“It’s this ecosys­tem, where we real­ly want to co-cre­ate togeth­er.”

What are AIBOT’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans? Are you already in con­ver­sa­tion with the FAA?

JC: “We are US-based, so the ini­tial jour­ney will be with the FAA. We’re already start­ing to talk to them, and the rela­tion­ship is grow­ing. We will also look at glob­al mar­kets as well, as we have var­i­ous exper­tise in var­i­ous areas across the world that will assist that.

“We will be look­ing a lot at the bi-lat­er­al agree­ments to see if we can lever­age some of them, but the ini­tial phase will be with the FAA.”

AIBOT is a com­pa­ny which is fair­ly new on its jour­ney to mar­ket, but what are the main indus­try trends you’re see­ing at the moment?

JW: “One idea that sup­port­ed us to launch AIBOT and start this jour­ney was see­ing a rev­o­lu­tionised oppor­tu­ni­ty over the next 50 — 100 years. “Right now, the over­all trans­porta­tion sys­tem is run­ning very effi­cient­ly; there are cars every­where but lim­it­ed to the cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy.

What AIBOT is work­ing on, along­side Hon­ey­well, is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a prod­uct to move peo­ple to a three-dimen­sion­al mod­el and ful­ly utilise all the spaces around the plan­et, which enables us to move more effi­cient­ly than what we’re able to do right now.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly a very excit­ing jour­ney, and we believe that rather than say­ing ‘we’re com­pet­ing with that com­pa­ny’, it’s instead work­ing togeth­er to push this whole ecosys­tem and try to make our vision come true.”

Any final thoughts?

JW: “We think our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hon­ey­well is an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty and a good fit for AIBOT, both regard­ing the teams and our vision. “In terms of Dubai and the UAE, I admire what they are try­ing to do here. They are very for­ward- look­ing and focused on AI, clean ener­gy, trans­porta­tion, and avi­a­tion. They have a vision for the next 50 years and are tak­ing actu­al steps to make it hap­pen.”

TA: “When we think about the Honeywell’s lega­cy of flight con­trols, it comes from big iron air­craft and it’s neces­si­tat­ed to shrink. “The only way it’s going to work on AIBOT and sim­i­lar advanced air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles is to make it small­er and lighter, but keep that same lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion and improve on it.

“Our com­pact fly-by-wire sys­tem is now built and designed for the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket because these vehi­cles are not going to be flown by hand. When you have six, eight, ten or even 12 rotors, it’s impos­si­ble for a pilot to con­trol them indi­vid­u­al­ly. This flight con­trol sys­tem is cre­at­ing a lighter, safer solu­tion.

“You don’t have the mechan­i­cal link­ages any­more, you have enve­lope pro­tec­tion built into it so a pilot can­not get them­selves into a poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic or unsafe posi­tion. The tech­nol­o­gy from the flight con­trol laws itself are going to allow a pilot to make move­ments with the incep­tors and get the right response from all of the affect­ed sur­faces.

“This box is pur­pose built for this mar­ket. The triplex redun­dant sys­tem is what advanced air mobil­i­ty needs and what AIBOT is going to ben­e­fit from.”

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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