Supernal and TruWeather introduce real-time micro weather forecasting to AAM

Super­nal last week announced a minor­i­ty invest­ment in TruWeath­er Solu­tions to lever­age its weath­er data ana­lyt­ics and fore­cast­ing tech­nol­o­gy in Super­nal’s eVTOL vehi­cle and oper­a­tions test­ing.

Super­nal will pilot TruWeath­er’s V360° soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice prod­uct in the Com­pa­ny’s vehi­cle and sur­round­ing oper­a­tions to col­lect and inte­grate real-time dis­trib­uted sen­sor weath­er data.

V360° will pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive view of low-alti­tude weath­er and enable the Com­pa­ny to more accu­rate­ly assess and pre­dict weath­er con­di­tions at crit­i­cal loca­tions and along flight paths. Super­nal plans to deploy the TruWeath­er sys­tem in its future launch mar­kets and make the infra­struc­ture avail­able to the broad­er AAM com­mu­ni­ty.

“Super­nal will incor­po­rate TruWeath­er tech­nol­o­gy into our vehi­cle and oper­a­tions test­ing as we work to make AAM as safe and reli­able as com­mer­cial avi­a­tion,” said Adam Slepi­an, chief com­mer­cial offi­cer of Super­nal.

“The con­cept is sim­ple: Bet­ter weath­er mea­sure­ments mean bet­ter fore­casts for AAM oper­a­tions. TruWeath­er’s solu­tion can turn poten­tial flight delays or can­cel­la­tions into safe and time­ly pas­sen­ger jour­neys for Super­nal cus­tomers.”

V360° can deliv­er eVTOL oper­a­tors wind and weath­er updates every 15 min­utes with tens of metres of grid res­o­lu­tion at and around ver­ti­ports. This mod­el has 1 kilo­me­tre or bet­ter res­o­lu­tion along flight cor­ri­dors and cap­tures the effects that build­ings have on wind flow, which is crit­i­cal when fly­ing in urban envi­ron­ments. By com­par­i­son, the best data avail­able in com­mer­cial avi­a­tion today is 2.5 kilo­me­tre res­o­lu­tion and does not pro­vide for urban build­ing dis­rupt­ed wind flows.

Don Berchoff, co-founder and CEO of TruWeath­er Solu­tions said: We will work close­ly with one of the pre­mier mobil­i­ty ser­vice providers in the world to enable Super­nal’s suc­cess in build­ing a safe, effi­cient busi­ness. Our job is to keep them fly­ing safe­ly with the help of our sen­sor and urban mod­el­ling part­ners.”

TruWeath­er is a leader in iden­ti­fy­ing and adopt­ing the most advanced weath­er sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy to pow­er its pro­pri­etary weath­er soft­ware to deliv­er micro-weath­er pre­ci­sion and accu­ra­cy for the trans­porta­tion indus­try and beyond.

TruWeath­er has spent five years devel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of micro-weath­er data col­lec­tion tech­nol­o­gy and ana­lyt­ics for AAM and con­ducts R&D at UAS test ranges sanc­tioned by the FAA in four states across the US.

Last month, Super­nal and Inmarsat announced a part­ner­ship to define the appli­ca­tion of satel­lite con­nec­tiv­i­ty in AAM. The com­pa­nies will con­duct test­ing and data shar­ing to opti­mise hard­ware and net­work sys­tems, which will lead to the safe and effi­cient inte­gra­tion of eVTOL vehi­cles into the air­space.

Super­nal and Inmarsat part­ner on AAM vehi­cle con­nec­tiv­i­ty