EHang’s 216 eVTOL and Falcon logistics model complete BVLOS trial flights in Estonia as part of EU’s GOF 2.0 project

EHang has announced its flag­ship pas­sen­ger-grade 216 AAV and Fal­con logis­tics mod­el have com­plet­ed Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) tri­al flights for air­port trans­port and par­cel deliv­ery in Esto­nia, under the Euro­pean Union’s GOF 2.0 Inte­grat­ed Urban Air­space Val­i­da­tion (“GOF 2.0”) project.

The flights were aimed to demon­strate safe, autonomous and eco-friend­ly urban air mobil­i­ty and the inte­gra­tion of unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles and air taxis into manned oper­a­tions with air traf­fic man­age­ment and U‑space ser­vices. It fol­lows the the Eston­ian Trans­port Admin­is­tra­tion issu­ing a Spe­cial Per­mit to EHang for tri­al flights in des­ig­nat­ed air­space in the coun­try until the end of 2021. 

Dur­ing the live tri­als, the EHang 216 per­formed a flight mis­sion of pas­sen­ger VIP trans­port sce­nario from the Tar­tu Air­port to the Eston­ian Avi­a­tion Muse­um, no pas­sen­ger onboard, to demon­strate the uses cas­es and sce­nar­ios of eVTOL (elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing) intra-urban and peri-urban flights.

These tri­al flights are among the first wave of tri­als in the two-year GOF 2.0 project, with the focus of entry to and exit from defined air­spaces. The tri­als demon­strate how manned and unmanned avi­a­tion can enter and leave var­i­ous types of air­space, such as controlled/uncontrolled air­space and U‑space air­space. 

More­over, the EHang Fal­con logis­tics mod­el com­plet­ed a flight mis­sion of par­cel deliv­ery from the Tar­tu Air­port to a car­go ter­mi­nal at the Eston­ian Avi­a­tion Muse­um, to demon­strate the uses cas­es and sce­nar­ios of auto­mat­ed par­cel deliv­ery drones oper­at­ing at low lev­el. 

To date, EHang has con­duct­ed mul­ti­ple tri­al and demo flights of its pas­sen­ger-grade AAVs in 10 coun­tries across Asia, Europe, and North Amer­i­ca.

The com­pa­ny plan to con­tin­ue fur­ther involve­ments in GOF 2.0 and con­duct more tri­al flights in Europe to demon­strate the valid­i­ty, safe­ty, secu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems and manned oper­a­tions in a uni­fied, dense urban air­space using exist­ing ATM and U‑space ser­vices and sys­tems.

The GOF 2.0 Inte­grat­ed Urban Air­space VLD (GOF 2.0) will safe­ly, secure­ly, and sus­tain­ably demon­strate oper­a­tional valid­i­ty of serv­ing com­bined UAS, eVTOL and manned oper­a­tions in a uni­fied, dense urban air­space using cur­rent ATM and U‑space ser­vices and sys­tems.

The demon­stra­tions focus on val­i­da­tion of GOF 2.0 archi­tec­ture for high­ly auto­mat­ed real-time sep­a­ra­tion assur­ance in dense air space includ­ing pre­ci­sion weath­er and tele­com net­works for air-ground com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It will also sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to under­stand­ing how the safe inte­gra­tion of UAM and oth­er com­mer­cial drone oper­a­tions into ATM Air­space, with­out degrad­ing safe­ty, secu­ri­ty or dis­rupt­ing cur­rent air­space oper­a­tions, can be imple­ment­ed.

The GOF 2.0 project is one of sev­er­al projects man­aged by the SESAR Joint Under­tak­ing that are ded­i­cat­ed to U‑space, the Euro­pean Commission’s ini­tia­tive for the safe and secure inte­gra­tion of drones into the air­space.