CEiiA has just announced a new strategic business area based on an innovative concept of Advanced Air Mobility, whose main objective is to provide users with on-demand access to air mobility in semi-urban and urban areas
Photo: CEIIA
The most recent innovations in the Aeronautical industry make clear the technological advances that induce the emergence of new services and commercial models, as well as the need to develop unmanned aircraft with their own characteristics that enable logistical response in a context and/or medical emergency.
In this sense, in 2021, the CEiiA decided to create an Advanced Air Mobility Business Unit, "with the aim of creating value, adding knowledge and developing mechanisms and products, designed from scratch and certifiable for this expanding area", contextualises Inês Folhadela Furtado, Head of Advanced Air Mobility Business Unit.
To boost the implementation of this type of mobility, and in partnership with national industry, the Centre for Engineering and Product Development, through the AERO.NEXT of the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan, is executing a work package - Services in Advanced Air Mobility (SAAM) - which includes the development of a drone platform and the certification of products and technologies associated with the context of advanced air mobility operation in semi-urban and urban areas, which will be different in relation to current solutions.
This new vehicle, developed with the capacity to respond to logistics needs and adaptable to the context and/or medical emergency, is being developed according to European safety requirements and will be equipped with a set of safety systems.
The head of this unit explains that "this development and validation of this set of key technologies, based on flight safety, enables the creation and provision of new services".
Very recently, this Advanced Air Mobility unit of CEiiA, under a strategic partnership with Connect Robotics, SA developed a Flight Termination System (FTS) a security system to be integrated into drones, which ensures the containment of the aircraft in the area of flight, thus reducing the risk for people and property.
This FTS was supervised in functioning and operation environment by the National Civil Aviation Authority (ANAC), which issued a positive opinion, since the whole system and the test methodologies are in accordance with the MOC Light-UAS.2511-01 containment of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
"The need to develop technologies to create a safe ecosystem, whether for semi-urban or urban realities, arises following the knowledge generated and the work in progress in the Advanced Air Mobility sector", explains Inês Folhadela Furtado, responsible for this strategic business area, adding that the "next step is to evolve this preliminary version that has already been tested and approved into an agnostic product that can be integrated into any type of drone".
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