Skyportz Vertipad Patent “Wins Blue Sky Innovation Award” at Avalon International Airshow.

The air taxi ver­ti­pad design devel­oped by Sky­portz has won the Blue Sky Inno­va­tion Award at the recent Aus­tralian Aval­on Inter­na­tion­al Air­show, reports a press release.

Inno­va­tion Awards Con­venor, Dr Gre­gor Fer­gu­son, said that the Sky­portz entry “was very strong” and “spot­ted a prob­lem with down-wash veloc­i­ties; antic­i­pat­ed that it could become sig­nif­i­cant; then pre­sent­ed a solu­tion that was clear­ly the result of sig­nif­i­cant thought.” He added, “The Judg­ing pan­el was impressed by all of the entries, but the Sky­portz ver­ti­pad was a wor­thy win­ner in a very strong field of entrants.”

The release explains, “The issue of down­wash and out­wash safe­ty has been high­light­ed by the FAA in Jan­u­ary in its Engi­neer­ing Brief 105A where the Amer­i­can air reg­u­la­tor indi­cat­ed that ver­ti­pads will need to have a wind safe­ty zone beyond the land­ing sur­face. This safe­ty zone has been defined as where the wind­speed exceeds 34.5 mph.”

Sky­portz Releas­es “Ver­ti­pad Patent”, Enables New Urban Land­ing Sites for Air Taxis

The Swin­burne Uni­ver­si­ty (SU) research con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Jutin Leon­ti­ni con­clud­ed that the Sky­portz mod­u­lar ver­ti­pad may dis­si­pate ener­gy up to 250 per­cent faster than an air taxi land­ing on a flat tar­mac, there­by safe­ly shrink­ing the land size required for ver­ti­ports.

SU’s Tech­nol­o­gy AIR Hub’s exper­tise spans from con­cept through to pro­to­type, under­tak­ing test­ing and eval­u­a­tion of all things that fly. With a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary net­work, the AIR Hub pro­vides indus­try with unpar­al­leled access to experts in deep tech, aero­space, robot­ics, AI and mate­ri­als sci­ence to dri­ve inno­va­tion in avi­a­tion and aero­space.

Clem New­ton-Brown, CEO of Sky­portz, com­ment­ed, “Our ver­ti­pad patent has some very real appli­ca­tions as cities move to estab­lish­ing ver­ti­port net­works out­side of exist­ing air­ports and heli­pads. It means that with our ver­ti­pad you can safe­ly use less land or fit more ver­ti­pads onto small­er plots. We are now in dis­cus­sions with poten­tial part­ners to licence our tech­nol­o­gy in all emerg­ing mar­kets so we can make our ver­ti­pad avail­able to all”.

Sky­portz says it aims to break the nexus between avi­a­tion and air­ports and enable com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al prop­er­ty devel­op­ers to host ver­ti­ports.

New­ton-Brown con­tin­ued, “The ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture is the miss­ing piece of the puz­zle for this indus­try. It is only with a mul­ti­tude of new ver­ti­pad land­ing sites in places peo­ple want to go, that the indus­try will be able to deliv­er on the promise of avi­a­tion on demand.”

The Aus­tralian air reg­u­la­tor, CASA recent­ly released ver­ti­port guide­lines, sig­nalling a com­mit­ment to facil­i­tate Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in Aus­tralia. EASA and FAA have also released ver­ti­port guide­lines, sig­nalling the wide pol­i­cy sup­port for new land­ing sites glob­al­ly.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportz.com

(Images: Sky­portz)

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