Embraer and Eve evaluate autonomous flight in real flights over Rio de Janeiro

Embraer has con­clud­ed a series of exper­i­men­tal flights in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focussed on eval­u­at­ing new autonomous sys­tem tech­nolo­gies in real flight con­di­tions.

The aer­i­al data col­lec­tion and real-time eval­u­a­tion in urban sce­nar­ios used reg­u­lar pilot­ed heli­copters as part of the Embraer Autonomous Sys­tems project (Project EASy).

Embraer worked with Eve UAM for sev­en days in col­lab­o­ra­tion with part­ners Daedalean, Iris Automa­tion, and Near Earth Auton­o­my, dur­ing which time they explored sce­nar­ios for take-off, climb, cruise, approach, and land­ing flight phas­es.

The heli­copters from Helisul Avi­ação, an Eve part­ner for UAM devel­op­ment in Brazil, were con­trolled by pro­fes­sion­al pilots while sys­tems cap­tured data and per­formed real-time cal­cu­la­tions.

Embraer head of autonomous sys­tems Julio Bolzani said: “This project allowed us to eval­u­ate tech­nolo­gies in real-time and also col­lect data that will lat­er be used in sim­u­la­tions.

“It is impor­tant to note that we are not going straight to ful­ly autonomous oper­a­tions and pilots will be on board to ben­e­fit from safer and sim­pli­fied vehi­cle oper­a­tion until we reach a ful­ly cer­ti­fied autonomous flight sys­tem for UAM.”

This exper­i­men­tal process is also con­nect­ed to the Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) coor­di­nat­ed by Eve since 2021, in coop­er­a­tion with strate­gic part­ners and gov­ern­ment enti­ties to con­vert this knowl­edge into a work­ing data and analy­sis frame­work to guide all oper­a­tional aspects of the future of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty.

Eve co-CEO Andre Stein con­clud­ed: “We are thrilled with all oper­a­tional aspects exer­cised and data acquired in this project and its direct con­nec­tion to our CONOPS, which are sol­id steps for safe­ly intro­duc­ing future autonomous oper­a­tions and accel­er­at­ing the afford­abil­i­ty and growth of the UAM mar­ket.”

In March, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty com­plet­ed the CONOPS for air­space inte­gra­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in the UK, a case study look­ing at trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers between Heathrow Air­port and Lon­don City Air­port.

Led by Eve, the UK Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium con­sists of NATS, Heathrow Air­port, Lon­don City Air­port, Sky­ports, Ate­ch, Volo­copter, and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, in part­ner­ship with the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) Inno­va­tion Hub through its Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box.

Last Decem­ber, EmbraerX and Australia’s civ­il air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vice provider, Airser­vices, devel­oped a new CONOPS to help accel­er­ate the growth of UAM, using Mel­bourne as a mod­el, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly prepar­ing for scale of oper­a­tions through new traf­fic man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies.