EHang becomes latest partner to join Ambular project and help develop eVTOL air ambulance

EHang has been select­ed to join the Ambu­lar, the inter­na­tion­al project which is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a fly­ing ambu­lance for med­ical emer­gency mis­sions.

The Chi­nese firm will con­tribute hard­ware such as rotors and motors to help dri­ve research and devel­op­ment of the pow­er com­po­nent for the air­craft. The project is sup­port­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Organ­i­sa­tion (ICAO).

EHang Founder, Chair­man and CEO, Huazhi Hu, said: “We are excit­ed to join the ICAO-sup­port­ed Ambu­lar project, where we can work with indus­try lead­ers to ful­fill the mis­sion of ‘sav­ing crit­i­cal min­utes’ in emer­gen­cies.  This can demon­strate the great val­ue of UAM to soci­ety.  

“We see that UAM has the poten­tial to mate­ri­al­ly improve trans­porta­tion and have a pos­i­tive impact on peo­ples’ lives.  Safe­ty, smart cities, clus­ter man­age­ment and eco-friend­li­ness form the fun­da­men­tal tenets for a mod­ern UAM ecosys­tem.  The devel­op­ment of UAM sys­tems will cre­ate a viable alter­na­tive to exist­ing ground trans­porta­tion.”

EHang’s exper­tise and expe­ri­ence in using AAVs for emer­gency response is also expect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the project, which seeks to inspire the glob­al avi­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty to unleash the poten­tial of eVTOL air­craft.

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, EHang’s two-seat pas­sen­ger-grade AAV served as an air ambu­lance to trans­port med­ical sup­plies and per­son­nel to a hos­pi­tal dur­ing the COVID-19 out­break in Chi­na, which cur­rent­ly relies main­ly on ambu­lances or heli­copters.  

EHang is con­tin­u­ing to explore the use of AAVs to solve chal­lenges in emer­gency response, such as flood res­cue, for­est fire­fight­ing and high-rise fire­fight­ing.

The Ambu­lar Project was the out­come of the ICAO’s explo­ration of the future of avi­a­tion in 2017, which recog­nised the pos­si­ble use of AAVs for extreme­ly rapid med­ical trans­port.

The Ambu­lar 2.0 has the capac­i­ty of two peo­ple – one med­ical per­son­nel and one pas­sen­ger. Because of its com­pact size, it’s able to fly around close build­ings and reach high floors, moun­tain­ous areas, marine sites and many oth­er places where oth­er­wise access with a heli­copter would be dif­fi­cult.

The air­craft is autonomous and han­dled by an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tem remote­ly mon­i­tored by a trained pilot in a com­mand cen­tre. In case of spe­cial means flight con­trol, the para­medic takes con­trol. 

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it http://ambular.org/.