Vertical Flight Society’s eVTOL Symposium and autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting to address key topics

Indus­try lead­ers from across the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket will share their thoughts at the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s 8th eVTOL Sym­po­sium and 9th bien­ni­al autonomous VTOL Tech­ni­cal Meet­ing.

The vir­tu­al event will be held from Jan­u­ary 26th-28th and fea­tures tech­ni­cal papers and pre­sen­ta­tions relat­ed to autonomous VTOL air­craft, while the sym­po­sium will com­prise invit­ed pre­sen­ta­tions, pan­el ses­sions and dis­cus­sions on eVTOL and hybrid-elec­tric VTOL air­craft — with a focus on urban air mobil­i­ty.

Intro­duc­ing the event on its web­site, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety said: “Elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion is an excit­ing new approach to ver­ti­cal flight air­craft design and the 8th Annu­al eVTOL Sym­po­sium is a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty for design­ers, devel­op­ers, inno­va­tors, investors, reg­u­la­tors, infra­struc­ture providers, end users, media and key influ­encers to share knowl­edge and work towards real­is­ing the eVTOL rev­o­lu­tion. This is also a tremen­dous net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for those new to the VTOL indus­try.”

Start­ing on Jan­u­ary 26th at 8am Moun­tain Stan­dard Time (MST), the morn­ing ses­sions for the eVTOL Sym­po­sium will fea­ture gov­ern­ment and indus­try keynotes before the first ses­sion dis­cuss­es the mar­ket devel­op­ment of the eVTOL air­craft indus­try; what stage it is at now and what is left to be done.

Mod­er­at­ed by Pari­mal Kopardekar of NASA, the speak­ers include Michael Dyment, Man­ag­ing Part­ner of NEXA Advi­sors, Cyrus Sigari, Co-Founder and Man­ag­ing Part­ner of UP.partners, Jim Vio­la, Pres­i­dent and CEO of HAI, and Starr Ginn, NASA’s Nation­al Cam­paign Lead.

The sec­ond ses­sion of the after­noon will focus on indus­try updates, and fea­tures Tim Williams, Chief Engi­neer at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Joerg-Peter Mueller, Head of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty at Air­bus, Pamela Cohn, Vice Pres­i­dent of Glob­al Oper­a­tions and Strat­e­gy at Hyundai, Kyle Clark, Founder of Beta Tech­nolo­gies, and Gary Gysin, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Wisk.

On Jan­u­ary 27th, there will be morn­ing ses­sions about Mod­el­ling and Sim­u­la­tion and Stan­dards Devel­op­ment, with the after­noon spent talk­ing about Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing and a look back on the indus­try suc­cess­es of 2020 — despite the chal­lenges due to Covid-19 restric­tions.

While the final day will con­sist of pan­els on Infra­struc­ture, Real­is­tic and Pos­i­tive Train­ing for eVTOL and VTOL Oper­a­tors, the Future Ver­ti­cal Work­force and eCTOL and eSTOL indus­try updates.

Describ­ing the event on its web­site, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety says the Autonomous VTOL Tech­ni­cal Meet­ing is ‘an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about and dis­cuss with aca­d­e­m­ic, indus­try, and mil­i­tary engi­neers from around the world the lat­est advance­ments in manned/unmanned, elec­tric/hy­brid/­tur­boshaft-pow­ered, and civil/military autonomous VTOL air­craft tech­nol­o­gy.’

Papers have been invit­ed in the areas of autonomous or unmanned air vehi­cles and con­trol sta­tions, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:

Civil­ian and mil­i­tary plat­forms of all sizes, rang­ing from micro vehi­cles (MAVs) through full-scale manned air­craft, and the full range of auton­o­my and asso­ci­at­ed enabling tech­nolo­gies

Ful­ly autonomous, ground-con­trolled, and option­al­ly manned vehi­cles

All aspects of oper­a­tor inter­face design

Air vehi­cle and oper­a­tor con­trol sta­tions

For more infor­ma­tion about the event and how to reg­is­ter, as well as see­ing the full agen­da and list of speak­ers, click .