“Ultimately we need all the building blocks,” said Nynke Lipsius, director of the Amsterdam Drone Week (ADW), summarizing the first online ADW Industry Update. In the hour before, seven speakers shared the latest developments in urban air mobility on building the UAM Infrastructure.
They also discussed the most important building blocks: rules and regulations, city policy/public embracement, harmonized skies, digital infrastructure or UAM OEM Technology Development. Viewers could vote on which of the building blocks they considered to be the most important. 33% of them voted for rules and regulations, 24% felt that city policy/public embracement is the most important building block and 22% voted for harmonized skies.
Spectacular presentation
Andreas Perotti, Chief Marketing Manager at EHang, kicked off the webinar with a spectacular presentation on the latest developments at the Chinese manufacturer of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles. Perotti talked about the IPO of EHang, the various test flights worldwide and concluded his presentation with a teaser about the upcoming cooperation with Linz AG and FACC.
Wesley Poland, Project Manager at Royal Netherlands Aerospace Center (NLR), then spoke about the integration of eVTOLS in cities. For this it will have to be safe, secure and sustainable, but above all accepted by society. The first step that Poland says should be taken to allow eVTOLS to fly in and over cities is more field testing. "They are the most vital step in the development of UAM."
Jacob Groote, Executive Vice President at KPN, spoke about the implementation of 5G and the need for a faster mobile network. “5G is the first reliable network. And for building an ecosystem and the connections between drones, their pilots and the management systems a solid network is really important. Also for communication between drones.”
Panel discussion
The second part of the webinar was a panel discussion led by Sebastian Babiarz, Head of Strategic Business Development AirMap and Co-President GUTMA.
Panel member Lizann Tjon, Program Manager Smart Mobility at City of Amsterdam, first gave an introduction about the developments in the Dutch capital, where UAM is seen as an important addition to the mobility mix.
Mildred Troegeler, Director Global Regulatory Strategy at Boeing and also a member of the panel, explained how much experience Boeing already has with unmanned air vehicles and the use of the airspace and she stated that Boeing would like to share those experiences with the rest of the global community.
Jacob Groote, in turn, thanked Troegeler for her call for a communication infrastructure for the entire market. “It will be a fully digital infrastructure.” Groote stated that “scale is not the problem for providers like KPN. We are already connecting 7 billion people and many more devices. But we must have a reliable network and the various networks must connect.”
Ken Engelstad, Project manager drones at EASA, then talked about the latest developments in European legislation and regulations.
Watch a short impression of the ADW Industry Update
