Skyroads publishes second white paper and seeks to address issue of autonomy for development of advanced air mobility

Sky­roads has pub­lished its sec­ond white paper today (Thurs­day), which aims to address how to achieve inter­op­er­a­ble trans­port automa­tion lead­ing to auton­o­my for the devel­op­ment of advanced air mobil­i­ty.

The Ger­man start­up is devel­op­ing, test­ing and imple­ment­ing an Auto­mat­ed Air­space Man­age­ment and Vehi­cle Guid­ance Sys­tem (AAVS). It pub­lished its first white paper in 2020 and this new doc­u­ment, enti­tled ‘A Roadmap for Flight Automa­tion in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty — Cre­at­ing an Auto­mat­ed Air­space Man­age­ment and Vehi­cle Guid­ance Sys­tem’, also talks about how the sys­tems pur­su­ing that goal add val­ue to advanced air mobil­i­ty until the required automa­tion has been achieved and is ade­quate­ly reg­u­lat­ed.

Con­trib­u­tors to this white paper are Ralph Schup­pen­hauer, Lead Ground Sys­tems at Sky­roads, and Corvin Huber, CEO and co-founder.

Huber said: “Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is fac­ing a clas­sic chick­en-and-egg-prob­lem. While there are var­i­ous approach­es on how to man­age auto­mat­ed flight, there is nei­ther con­sen­sus on either rules or stan­dards for even semi-auto­mat­ed fly­ing in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas nor is there a mar­ket yet.

“This needs to be resolved in close col­lab­o­ra­tion between reg­u­la­tors, the air vehi­cle indus­try and tech­nol­o­gy providers such as Sky­roads who bring the nec­es­sary know-how and neu­tral­i­ty to the table. It is clear that air vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers will pro­vide the vehi­cles to fly, but they will not be able to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly build the roads and sys­tems required to get UAM off the ground with regards to inter­op­er­a­ble man­age­ment quick­ly and prof­itably. Mer­cedes, GM and Toy­ota build great cars, but they have nev­er built a road.”  

In the ‘Intro­duc­tion’, Sky­roads out­lines the fun­da­men­tal bound­ary con­di­tions for the devel­op­ment of traf­fic man­age­ment. It talks about the human-cen­tric approach that guides gen­er­al think­ing to this day, dis­cuss­es dif­fer­ent pilotage con­cepts as well as cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments and set the scene in which devel­op­ment needs to take place.

The com­pa­ny also looks at those lev­els in order to define the mar­ket phas­es in which any time­ly devel­op­ment needs to sup­ply val­ue. It then presents an analy­sis for inter­na­tion­al activ­i­ty with regards to the con­cept of Sim­pli­fied Vehi­cle Oper­a­tions, as a cred­i­ble approach towards automa­tion.

An out­side analy­sis con­cludes in ‘Bar­ri­ers to Flight Automa­tion’, with an overview of chal­lenges to be solved or side­stepped, in order to advance advanced air mobil­i­ty. Sky­roads will then out­line the require­ments for a Con­trol and Nav­i­ga­tion Sys­tem and explain the fun­da­men­tals of its own design.

And final­ly, in the chap­ter ‘Sky­roads-enabled path to Flight Automa­tion’ and ‘Ben­e­fits’, the start­up will show how its AAVS sup­ports visu­al flight rules and remote­ly pilot­ed air sys­tems approach­es simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. It argues that we cre­ate the unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to speed up devel­op­ment. At the same time, our approach cre­ates cred­i­bil­i­ty and ser­vice record for ear­ly cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Huber adds: “At Sky­roads we are at the fore­front of cre­at­ing such an open, auto­mat­ed and inter­op­er­a­ble air traf­fic man­age­ment and vehi­cle guid­ance sys­tem. Ini­tial tests at our own test­ing air space in Memmingen/Tannheim were suc­cess­ful. And we have expe­ri­enced sub­stan­tial inter­est from not only man­u­fac­tur­ers, but also cities and regions around the world, result­ing in strate­gic coop­er­a­tions. ]

“The need for our solu­tions and sys­tems is here. And I am con­vinced that we will deliv­er in time to help launch UAM as a safe and open mode of trans­porta­tion around the globe.”

Corvin Huber was a recent guest on the eVTOL Insights Pod­cast and you can lis­ten to the episode by click­ing here. To down­load a copy of the white paper, by click­ing here.