Vertical Flight Society workshop to focus on progress towards autonomous vertical flight

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) is host­ing its fourth annu­al pan­el on Mon­day, which will bring top experts togeth­er to dis­cuss the chal­lenges, progress and appli­ca­tions that auton­o­my will enable.

Enti­tled ‘Progress Towards Autonomous Ver­ti­cal Flight’, the half-day webi­nar is spon­sored by Near Earth Auton­o­my and sup­port­ed by the Asso­ci­a­tion for Unmanned Vehi­cle Sys­tems Inter­na­tion­al (AUVSI). Mod­er­at­ed by Gra­ham War­wick, Exec­u­tive Edi­tor for Tech­nol­o­gy at Avi­a­tion Week — the pro­gramme will con­sist of three top­ic areas: Break­ing Down the Need, Devel­op­ment and Appli­ca­tion of Auton­o­my.

The first ses­sion starts with a pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing San­jiv Singh, CEO of Near Earth Auton­o­my, estab­lish­ing the frame­work of why we need to pur­sue auton­o­my, fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion on ‘Enabling Auton­o­my’ with tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers Luuk van Dijk, CEO of Daedalean; Fran­cis Gov­ers, Plat­form Auton­o­my Lead at Bell; and Maxime Gariel, CTO of Xwing.

The sec­ond ses­sion fea­tures Gary Gysin, CEO of Wisk, out­lin­ing the process for Design­ing for Auton­o­my and a pan­el dis­cus­sion on apply­ing auton­o­my with tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers Steve Jacob­son, CEO of Auton­o­dyne; Dave Mer­rill, CEO of Elroy Air; and Igor Chere­pin­sky, Direc­tor of Inno­va­tions at Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin Com­pa­ny.

And in the final ses­sion, Col. Nathan Diller, US Air Force, Direc­tor of AFWERX and the Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime lead, will present ‘Apply­ing Auton­o­my in Oper­a­tions’.

This will be fol­lowed by a pan­el dis­cus­sion on “Cer­ti­fy­ing Auton­o­my” with tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers Daniel Moczyd­low­er, Pres­i­dent and CEO of EmbraerX; Wes Ryan, Unmanned and Pilot­less Air­craft Tech­nol­o­gy Lead for the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA); and Steve Cook (Northrop Grum­man), rep­re­sent­ing the work by stan­dards devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion ASTM Inter­na­tion­al.

The annu­al VFS Autonomous Ver­ti­cal Flight pan­el has his­tor­i­cal­ly been held at the AUVSI’s XPONENTIAL trade show, which had been planned for the week of 10th August. But due to cur­rent Covid-19 restric­tions, this year’s event is going vir­tu­al.

The pan­els are intend­ed to edu­cate AUVSI mem­bers and XPONENTIAL atten­dees on the promise and progress of auton­o­my for ver­ti­cal flight. With the sub­se­quent post­pone­ment, and even­tu­al con­ver­sion to a vir­tu­al pro­gram of this year’s XPONENTIAL, the pro­gram is now a stand-alone vir­tu­al event, and has expand­ed to a dozen indus­try and gov­ern­ment experts rep­re­sent­ing four con­ti­nents, North Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca, Europe and Australia/Oceania.

It has been organ­ised by AUVSI and VFS mem­bers Ajay Seh­gal (KBR) and Bar­bara Lin­dauer (Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin Com­pa­ny), and by VFS Direc­tor of Strate­gic Devel­op­ment, Jim Sher­man. 

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has worked to advance autonomous ver­ti­cal flight avi­a­tion for more than two decades. Auton­o­my in air­craft sys­tems has the poten­tial to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce pilot work­load, increase air trans­porta­tion safe­ty and enable new air trans­porta­tion mar­kets.

Over the past 75 years, VFS — the world’s only mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion that spans the glob­al civil/military and manned/unmanned ver­ti­cal flight com­mu­ni­ty in indus­try, gov­ern­ments and acad­e­mia — has played a key lead­er­ship role in advanc­ing the indus­try.

The work­shop will take place from 11.30am to 3.30pm EDT. For more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for the event, vis­it .