UAVOS unveils its SumoAir air taxi concept as it looks to explore UAM market

Unmanned vehi­cle and autopi­lot spe­cial­ist UAVOS has pre­sent­ed its air taxi as an autonomous con­cept for ver­ti­cal e‑mobility.

Called SumoAir, the all-elec­tric tan­dem rotor heli­copter can seat five pas­sen­gers and includes a pilot cab­in which can be attached to either a car or a flight mod­ule. The heli­copter will be oper­at­ed both man­u­al­ly and autonomous­ly.

The project is a part of UAVOS’ R&D efforts to explore and under­stand the fun­da­men­tal tech­nolo­gies behind elec­tric air­craft and the urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) mar­ket.

Ali­ak­sei Strat­si­latau, UAVOS’s CEO and Lead Devel­op­er, said: “By 2030, 43 cities will be home to over 10 mil­lion peo­ple. In con­gest­ed cities such as Los Ange­les and Moscow, com­muters spend near­ly 100 hours a year in traf­fic jams. We expect autonomous fly­ing will def­i­nite­ly ease the traf­fic bur­den on city roads. Air taxi could be ide­al for urban rideshar­ing in the near future.”

SumoAir has a tan­dem rotor con­fig­u­ra­tion with two large hor­i­zon­tal rotors mount­ed one in front of the oth­er. The UAV fea­tures two redun­dant high — lift propul­sion units.

Its three-blad­ed rotors have a diam­e­ter of 23ft and dri­ven by two elec­tric motors at around 520 rpm, and SumoAir also has addi­tion­al safe­ty advan­tages such as autoro­ta­tion flight and land­ing capa­bil­i­ty.

SumoAir is tar­get­ing a cruise speed of approx­i­mate­ly 87 mph (140 km/h) and a cruise alti­tude of up to 8,200 ft (2,500 m). It mea­sures 11.5m long and 7.5m wide, with a pay­load of up to 1,680 kg.

Strat­si­latau believes that beyond reg­u­la­tions, safe­ty and cost, there are a few fac­tors that are cru­cial in the UAM mar­ket.

He added: “It is the abil­i­ty to work with dif­fer­ent play­ers in all the dif­fer­ent indus­tries need­ed to make air taxis work, such as avi­a­tion, auto­mo­tive, tele­com, soft­ware, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and real estate. Anoth­er is the adop­tion of reg­u­la­tions sup­port­ing com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vices by gov­ern­ments.”

UAVOS also offers pro­pri­etary unmanned aer­i­al, ground and sur­face solu­tions with appli­ca­tions in com­mer­cial, indus­tri­al and defense mar­kets.

It spe­cialis­es in the design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of unmanned vehi­cles and autopi­lot sys­tems as well as com­po­nents such as ser­vo dri­ves, pan-tilt plat­forms, rescue/emergency land­ing sys­tems. UAVOS’ solu­tions range from small indus­tri­al sur­veil­lance drones to large UAVs.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it https://www.uavos.com/