Hanwha Systems partners with airport operator in new Urban Air Mobility project

Major defense con­trac­tor Han­wha Sys­tems is work­ing togeth­er with Korea Air­port Cor­po­ra­tion (KAC) to devel­op air taxis, infra­struc­ture and ser­vices — as mem­bers of a pub­lic-pri­vate con­sul­ta­tive body called “Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) Team Korea”.

As report­ed in Aju Busi­ness Dai­ly, the two com­pa­nies have signed a UAM busi­ness agree­ment to devel­op tech­nolo­gies relat­ing to inte­grat­ed mon­i­tor­ing, con­trol, nav­i­ga­tion, take-off and land­ing facil­i­ties and board­ing ser­vices. They will also cre­ate step-by-step test­beds for the demon­stra­tion of UAM oper­a­tions.

The defense con­trac­tor will devel­op the air­frames for the air­craft, as well as the avion­ics tech­nol­o­gy. The infra­struc­ture will be built by KAC, which man­ages and oper­ates 14 air­ports. In addi­tion to build­ing land­ing pads for the air taxis, it will also help devel­op a busi­ness mod­el.

It fol­lows an ear­li­er announce­ment by the South Kore­an Gov­ern­ment, which out­lined a road map for the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of drone taxis in 2025, and autonomous flights in 2035. Some 40 com­pa­nies, research groups and state bod­ies have signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing to imple­ment the UAM road map.

Han­wha Sys­tems CEO Kim Yeon-chul said the com­pa­ny aims to become a lead­ing solu­tion com­pa­ny in the glob­al UAM mar­ket, adding: “We will cre­ate a suc­cess­ful UAM busi­ness mod­el based on tech­nolo­gies and know-how pos­sessed by both com­pa­nies.”

In July 2019, Han­wha Sys­tems announced a $25 mil­lion equi­ty invest­ment in K4 Aero­nau­tics, a U.S. per­son­al air vehi­cle (PAV) devel­op­er, fol­lowed by the acqui­si­tion of a 30 per­cent stake in Overair, an Amer­i­can eVTOL com­pa­ny.

The US government’s approval for Han­wha to invest in Overair will also accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the ‘But­ter­fly’ per­son­al-air-vehi­cle (PAV) project. Han­wha Sys­tems will con­tribute to the Butterfly’s devel­op­ment to max­imise the syn­er­gy between tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness.

The all-elec­tric VTOL air­craft lever­ages low-noise and high-effi­cien­cy Opti­mum Speed Tiltro­tor tech­nol­o­gy and under its cur­rent spec­i­fi­ca­tions, it can seat four pas­sen­gers and a pilot and trav­el up to 240 km/h for more than 100km.

Overair and Han­wha Sys­tems are work­ing togeth­er to get the But­ter­fly approved as a civil­ian all-elec­tric air-trans­port vehi­cle by the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion. Han­wha Sys­tems is also look­ing to increase its invest­ment in Overair and explore oppor­tu­ni­ties in Korea’s domes­tic mar­ket at the same time.

In addi­tion, Han­wha Sys­tems is cur­rent­ly work­ing on option­al­ly-pilot­ed per­son­al-air vehi­cles (OPPAV) and a Kore­an mul­ti-gov­ern­men­tal agency devel­op­ment project involv­ing the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port and Min­istry of Trade, Indus­try and Ener­gy.