Additional patents provide first public drawings of Joby Aviation’s tilt propeller eVTOL aircraft design

More than a dozen patents filed by eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Joby Avi­a­tion — which many believe will be one of the first to suc­cess­ful­ly bring its prod­uct to mar­ket — con­tains the first pub­licly avail­able draw­ings of the com­pa­ny’s pro­posed design and con­trol sys­tems.

In an arti­cle by Ken­neth Swartz on the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s eVTOL.News web­site, he writes that the Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office (USPTO) pub­lished sev­er­al patents last month, which is part of more than a dozen filed since Decem­ber 2019. Some of these update ear­li­er patent appli­ca­tions dat­ing back to 2015, while oth­ers are entire­ly new.

An appli­ca­tion for an ‘Air­craft Con­trol Sys­tem and Method’ is prob­a­bly the most reveal­ing, as it describes Joby’s uni­fied com­mand sys­tem in detail and con­tains the first pub­licly avail­able draw­ings of the Joby 2.0 tilt-pro­peller eVTOL (com­pared to draw­ings released in 2015 of the 1.0 con­fig­u­ra­tion).

Led by for­mer British Roy­al Air Force (RAF) test pilot Justin Paines, Joby rep­re­sen­ta­tives have been prais­ing uni­fied con­trol sys­tem installed in the short take­off and ver­ti­cal land­ing (STOVL) Lock­heed Mar­tin F‑35B Joint Strike Fight­er, to reduce pilot work­load and increase safe­ty.

Joby’s uni­fied com­mand sys­tem includes an input mech­a­nism, flight proces­sor, a con­trol out­put and effec­tors (con­trol sur­faces, pow­er lev­els) that are artic­u­lat­ed by the con­trol out­put. Joby says the sys­tem can also accom­mo­date option­al sen­sors that will deter­mine the vehi­cle state and or/flight regime and flight­path.

The appli­ca­tion was filed in the name of JoeBen Bevirt and Blake Eng­lish. Bevirt is the founder and CEO of Joby and 2018 recip­i­ent of the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Paul E. Haueter Award — award­ed for out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tion to the field of ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft devel­op­ment oth­er than a heli­copter or an oper­a­tional ver­ti­cal flight air­craft.

Eng­lish has worked for Joby since 2016 as an engi­neer, test pilot and flight oper­a­tions leader. He also pre­vi­ous­ly invent­ed a fam­i­ly of radio con­trolled lighter-than-air fly­ing toys that look like fish, called Air Swim­mers.

Found­ed in 2009, Joby Avi­a­tion is regard­ed as one of the fore­run­ners in the indus­try and now val­ued at more than $1 bil­lion, after announc­ing $720 mil­lion in fund­ing from com­pa­nies such as Toy­ota at the start of 2020.

It is sup­port­ing Uber Elevate’s 2023 in-ser­vice date, as one of 10 eVTOL air­craft OEMs, and until recent­ly had been rel­a­tive­ly qui­et in shar­ing its progress. Pic­tures of its S5 eVTOL air­craft emerged in Avi­a­tion Week in Sep­tem­ber, and now Joby has now been reveal­ing more infor­ma­tion through patent fil­ings, to pro­tect its pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy.