UK Government backs world-first project to build infrastructure for eVTOL aircraft and delivery drones

Urban-Air Port is part­ner­ing with Alti­tude Angel and Safe­guard Ver­ti­ports to work on the world’s first infra­struc­ture pro­gramme, which is backed by the UK Gov­ern­ment.

The project will involve design­ing safe and clean con­nect Air Archi­tec­ture™ for future air taxis and autonomous logis­tics drones. All three com­pa­nies will now work togeth­er to design, devel­op and show­case oper­a­tional Air Archi­tec­ture™ at the Urban-Air Port Air One® site in Coven­try lat­er this year.

Ricky Sand­hu, Founder of Urban-Air Port, said: “Our glob­al trans­port sys­tems are bro­ken. Inner-city trans­port is con­gest­ed, inef­fi­cient and pol­lut­ed. In remote loca­tions, it is either non-exis­tent or over-priced, leav­ing many iso­lat­ed and increas­ing eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ty. But to fix this, we still look to siloed and ancient road and rail infra­struc­ture.

“New inno­va­tions mean we can now reimag­ine trans­port to per­fect­ly meet the needs of peo­ple and pro­vide a cohe­sive, sus­tain­able and reli­able expe­ri­ence. Our Air Archi­tec­ture^™ can unlock clean and beau­ti­ful cities and con­nect the world in new ways – in the air and on the ground – bring­ing eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, cut­ting emis­sions and improv­ing qual­i­ty of life.”

NASA esti­mates more 70 per cent of the poten­tial urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket val­ue is depen­dent on infra­struc­ture. Urban-Air Port’s Air One® project is a world-first hub for future air taxis, drones and ground-based elec­tric trans­port, such as cars, e‑bikes and e‑scooters.

Alti­tude Angel has devel­oped a cost-effec­tive plat­form to dig­i­tal­ly sup­port the local Urban-Air Port air traf­fic zones, enabling it to enhance and pro­vide uni­fied traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) ser­vices.

It enables manned and unmanned air­craft to be tracked, mon­i­tored and com­mu­ni­cat­ed with and con­trolled in non seg­re­gat­ed air­space in real-time. The com­pa­ny launched the world’s first com­mer­cial drone ‘test cor­ri­dor’ in open and unre­strict­ed air­space in the Thames Val­ley, west of Lon­don.

While Safe­guard Ver­ti­ports will devel­op a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme that will meet Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty reg­u­la­tions for safe oper­a­tional turn­arounds. The com­pa­ny is a sub­sidiary of Safe­guard Engi­neer­ing Ltd. and pro­vides spe­cial­ist advice and sup­port on the design, devel­op­ment and use of ver­ti­port plat­form areas.

Its team is work­ing with reg­u­la­tors to devel­op an assess­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process that can be applied to all future ver­ti­ports world­wide, ensur­ing each plat­form area is designed, built and man­aged to the safest pos­si­ble stan­dard.

Richard Ellis, Chief Busi­ness Offi­cer at Alti­tude Angel, said: “By enabling eVTOL oper­a­tors to safe­ly tran­sit through ‘air roads’ and inte­grate their oper­a­tions into and around these urban air­ports, we will unlock the future poten­tial of the nation­al air­space infra­struc­ture.

“Our plat­form will allow all users of the sky, from air taxis and drone oper­a­tors to gen­er­al avi­a­tion and emer­gency ser­vice heli­copters to share the air­space safe­ly and secure­ly.”

Sim­i­lar to exist­ing air cor­ri­dors for com­mer­cial air­craft, ‘air roads’ will be approved and reg­u­lat­ed routes for future eVTOL air­craft that will enable safe and effi­cient trav­el between Urban-Air Port hubs and oth­er sites.

In the ini­tial phase, each cor­ri­dor will pro­vide seg­re­gat­ed air­space at defined alti­tudes for indi­vid­ual manned and unmanned air­craft. Like tra­di­tion­al air traf­fic con­trol, the process will ini­tial­ly be man­aged by peo­ple but as sys­tems mature, traf­fic mon­i­tor­ing will be con­duct­ed by intel­li­gent autonomous sys­tems.

The air roads will be in the first instance, sep­a­rate from exist­ing air­craft cor­ri­dors, oper­at­ing at much low­er alti­tudes when unmanned. They will be cre­at­ed between strate­gic loca­tions, away from build­ings and roads. Once the safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits are demon­strat­ed, the air­space will become increas­ing­ly uni­fied and grad­u­al­ly expand to more loca­tions to meet ris­ing demand.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Sec­re­tary of State for the Depart­ment of Busi­ness, Ener­gy and Indus­tri­al Strat­e­gy, said: “Clean­er, inter-city flight tech­nol­o­gy is vital not only to reduced emis­sions, but to bet­ter con­nect remote com­mu­ni­ties, from small towns in the UK to iso­lat­ed set­tle­ments all around the world.

“As we build back green­er from the pan­dem­ic, ini­tia­tives like the gov­ern­ment-backed Air One® project will help us devel­op the infra­struc­ture need­ed to make our dreams of fly­ing taxis a real­i­ty.”

Ear­li­er this year, Urban-Air Port was cho­sen by the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty divi­sion of Hyundai Motor Group as its pri­or­i­ty infra­struc­ture part­ner. Addi­tion­al­ly, it was select­ed as a win­ner of the UK Gov­ern­men­t’s Future Flight Chal­lenge to devel­op avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture for the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric and autonomous air vehi­cles.

The com­pa­ny plans to devel­op more than 200 sites around the world in the next five years to meet glob­al demand. eVTOL Insights spoke to Urban-Air Port’s Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, Alan Jones, in a pod­cast to dis­cuss its plans for the future.

Away from the eVTOL mar­ket, Urban-Air Port has also part­nered with Sky­Far­er and Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty to demon­strate med­ical drone deliv­er­ies on the Air Archi­tec­ture™. The project will also take place at the Air One® site in Coven­try lat­er this year.