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Skyportz’s Aeroberm™ vertipad patent launched at Vertical Flight Society’s Forum 82 and Rotortech in Australia

Sky­portz has com­mer­cial­ly launched its Aer­oberm™ patent­ed mod­u­lar ver­ti­pad sys­tem in a simul­ta­ne­ous glob­al debut at Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Forum 82 in West Palm Beach, Flori­da, and Rotortech 2026 on Aus­trali­a’s Gold Coast.

Tens of bil­lions of dol­lars have been invest­ed in eVTOL air­craft. Yet with­out a dense, afford­able net­work of land­ing infra­struc­ture, none of that invest­ment can deliv­er on its promise.

Lim­it­ing deploy­ment to exist­ing air­ports and heli­ports pro­duces noth­ing more than an expen­sive evo­lu­tion of heli­copter ser­vices. The trans­for­ma­tive vision — avi­a­tion on demand, at the den­si­ty of ride-shar­ing — requires ver­ti­pads where peo­ple actu­al­ly are: on build­ings, in sub­urbs, at region­al hubs.

Clem New­ton-Brown, Founder of Aer­oberm and Sky­portz Aus­tralia, said: “Many major cities are plan­ning for air taxis, yet almost none have fig­ured out the land­ing infra­struc­ture approvals process. That’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

“You can’t build an avi­a­tion net­work with­out places to land. Right now, oth­er than lega­cy heli­pads, we don’t have them.”

That infra­struc­ture does not exist. Four crit­i­cal bar­ri­ers are pre­vent­ing it from being built.

The Four Show­stop­pers — And How Aer­oberm™ Solves Each

Cost

Bespoke ver­ti­port con­struc­tion costs are pro­hib­i­tive for most devel­op­ers. Aer­ober­m’s off the shelf, mod­u­lar, deploy­able design brings ver­ti­pad infra­struc­ture with­in reach for prop­er­ty own­ers, devel­op­ers, and region­al oper­a­tors.

Down­wash and Out­wash

The FAA’s Engi­neer­ing Brief 105A sets a 34.5 mph out­wash bound­ary thresh­old. Meet­ing that stan­dard on con­ven­tion­al tar­mac demands vast buffer zones — land that does­n’t exist in mature cities or exists only at pro­hib­i­tive cost. Aer­ober­m’s frac­tal pan­els redi­rect and dis­si­pate out­wash, dra­mat­i­cal­ly shrink­ing the required safe­ty foot­print.

Noise

eVTOL air­craft are qui­et at alti­tude. They are not qui­et at take-off and land­ing. Aer­ober­m’s frac­tal pan­el tech­nol­o­gy reduces acoustic impact at the ver­ti­pad — a pre­req­ui­site for com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance in dense urban envi­ron­ments.

Fire Safe­ty

Lithi­um-ion ther­mal run­away is a deal­break­er for build­ing own­ers being asked to host ver­ti­ports. Aer­ober­m’s inte­grat­ed immer­sion-based “dunk tank” sys­tem con­tains and neu­tralis­es bat­tery fires — pro­tect­ing sur­round­ing ten­ants and elim­i­nat­ing the extend­ed evac­u­a­tions that would make ver­ti­pad host­ing com­mer­cial­ly and rep­u­ta­tion­al­ly unten­able.

New­ton-Brown added: “Noise, fire, out­wash, cost — these aren’t engi­neer­ing curiosi­ties. They’re the rea­son ver­ti­ports aren’t being built. Aer­oberm address­es all four.”

The Sci­ence Behind the Sys­tem

The Aer­oberm™ sys­tem is under­pinned by peer-reviewed com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ics research con­duct­ed at Swin­burne Uni­ver­si­ty — the first CFD mod­el­ling of frac­tal sur­face geom­e­try applied to eVTOL ground oper­a­tions, estab­lish­ing a new bench­mark for ver­ti­pad safe­ty and ameni­ty per­for­mance.

The research will be pre­sent­ed at VFS Forum 82 in West Palm Beach by Swin­burne researcher Andrew Che and founder Clem New­ton-Brown, and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at Rotortech 2026 on the Gold Coast by Pro­fes­sor Justin Leon­ti­ni of Swin­burne Uni­ver­si­ty.

About Aer­oberm™

Aer­oberm™ is a patent­ed mod­u­lar ver­ti­pad sys­tem devel­oped by Sky­portz Aus­tralia. It is the only ver­ti­pad prod­uct on the mar­ket engi­neered to address all four com­mer­cial show­stop­pers: cost, downwash/outwash safe­ty, noise, and lithi­um-ion fire con­tain­ment.

The prod­uct is backed by Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment research grants and won the Blue-Sky Avi­a­tion Award at Aval­on Inter­na­tion­al Air­show. Its under­ly­ing IP is inter­na­tion­al­ly filed.

Sky­portz is posi­tion­ing Aer­oberm™ as the glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dard for eVTOL land­ing infra­struc­ture — engag­ing with CASA, the FAA, EASA, and inter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion bod­ies accord­ing­ly.

You can read the aca­d­e­m­ic paper, by click­ing here.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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