GALLERY: Skyports Infrastructure Showcases Vertiport Operations technology During SkyDrive’s Tokyo Demo Flights

Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture has shared more details after it sup­port­ed Sky­Drive’s eVTOL air­craft demo flights in Tokyo with its Ver­ti­port Automa­tion Sys­tem (VAS), help­ing to under­pin the safe and effi­cient ground and flight oper­a­tions.

Tak­ing place from Feb­ru­ary 24th to 28th, the event saw demo flights of SkyDrive’s remote­ly pilot­ed air­craft over Tokyo Bay. Sky­ports was appoint­ed to inte­grate its VAS and help cre­ate a ful­ly func­tion­al pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal to pro­vide mem­bers of the pub­lic with a glimpse of the future elec­tric air taxi pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence.

Core tech­nolo­gies for safe and seam­less eVTOL oper­a­tions

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Sky­Drive, Skyport’s VAS pro­vid­ed the tech­ni­cal back­bone for seam­less flight and ground oper­a­tions. Inte­grat­ing with SkyDrive’s eVTOL air­craft, VAS was respon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing the sur­round­ing air­space, weath­er mon­i­tor­ing and sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, the man­age­ment of land­ing and take-off slot avail­abil­i­ty and the dig­i­tal man­age­ment of ground equip­ment.

Dur­ing the flights, flight data was inte­grat­ed into the air­space mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem, help­ing to facil­i­tate the aircraft’s auto­mat­ed con­trol and remote pilot­ing.

The future AAM pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence

Sky­ports was also respon­si­ble for the ver­ti­port ter­mi­nal demo and inte­grat­ing the tech­nolo­gies that help facil­i­tate the seam­less AAM pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence of the future.

The tem­po­rary ver­ti­port ter­mi­nal, which was inte­grat­ed with Skyport’s VAS, was designed for min­i­mal dwell time. It includ­ed advanced pas­sen­ger check in tech­nolo­gies such as facial recog­ni­tion, secu­ri­ty screen­ing, flight infor­ma­tion dis­plays and infor­ma­tion on board­ing pro­ce­dures. The ver­ti­port also includ­ed pas­sen­ger ameni­ties such as com­fort­able lounge facil­i­ties and pas­sen­ger view­ing deck.

Skyport’s VAS, and the over­all flight mon­i­tor­ing were man­aged from a ded­i­cat­ed Oper­a­tions Room with­in the ver­ti­port, which pro­vid­ed oper­a­tives with a holis­tic view of the aircraft’s ground and flight oper­a­tions, along­side pas­sen­ger sta­tus and check-in, facil­i­tat­ing a seam­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

A pub­lic pre­view of future flight in Japan

Under the spon­sor­ship of Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment, the over­all project was run and devel­oped with the aim of explor­ing how elec­tric air taxis could inte­grate into Japan’s future trans­port net­works.

With­in the part­ner­ship, Mit­subishi Estate Co. Ltd was respon­si­ble for the over­all project man­age­ment, the over­all devel­op­ment of the ter­mi­nal build­ing, and apply­ing the find­ings of the tri­al into how air taxis would inte­grate into Japan’s urban envi­ron­ment.

Kane­mat­su was respon­si­ble for the orga­ni­za­tion of reg­u­la­to­ry and tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion, study of the oper­a­tion of the ver­ti­port, demon­stra­tion with eval­u­a­tion of the oper­a­tion of the ver­ti­port ter­mi­nal, and sub-con­tract­ing Sky­ports for its Ver­ti­port Automa­tion Sys­tem and ver­ti­port tech­nolo­gies.

Yun Yuan Tay, Head of APAC, Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture, said: “Japan has always sat at the lead­ing edge of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment glob­al­ly, and this pub­lic demo of SkyDrive’s eVTOL air­craft, along­side the future ver­ti­port expe­ri­ence, cements Japan’s ambi­tions when it comes to inte­grat­ing AAM with­in the fab­ric of its urban envi­ron­ments.

“For AAM to be a suc­cess it ulti­mate­ly needs to be safe and effi­cient and pro­vide a next lev­el pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence, and it’s been an hon­our for Sky­ports to show­case how our tech­nolo­gies can pro­vide this crit­i­cal link between the ground and the air.”