Future of Air Mobility Accelerator Demo Day
Welcome
Thank you for joining us for the Future of Air Mobility Accelerator Demo Day at Aerospace Bristol.
In partnership with the Future Flight Challenge from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Accelerator selected 11 SMEs to join a 6-month programme, where they received support from a consortium of industry, academic and regulatory partners on the trialling and testing of disruptive innovations.
Connected Places Catapult delivered the programme in partnership with Plus X, supporting the SMEs through a bespoke programme roadmap tailored to their requirements, including investment readiness, technology and product development support, alongside introductions to aviation stakeholders and investors. These activities were co-designed with the SMEs in order to scale their businesses and adapt their propositions to programme partners requirements.
This Demo Day is an opportunity for the cohort of SMEs to showcase their businesses, demonstrate the achievements from the programme and share their future roadmap as they continue to scale their partnerships with the programme partners.
The exhibition is open from 4.30pm until 6.30pm, so please take this opportunity to visit each of the SMEs at their stands to learn more.
The Cohort
Altitude Angel
https://www.altitudeangel.com/
Creating safer skies for all with Unified Traffic Management.
Altitude Angel is an aviation technology company that enables safe integration and use of drones and UAVs into airspace around the world. They provide powerful Unified Traffic Management (UTM) capabilities – integrating drones with other air users, at scale with total safety.
Through the Future of Air Mobility programme, Altitude Angel has been looking at how using their UTM platform, they can offer airports of the future a digitised approval process for crane management, enabling autonomous flight to and from airports, further supporting new regulations being developed by the Civil Aviation Authority.
Head of Enterprise Sales & Channel Partner Manager
karim.cosslett@altitudeangel.com
Commonplace
Community engagement and data driven insights that powers positive participation.
Discover the online community engagement platform built to help create better places with more than 1600 projects, over 5.5Mil project visitors, and +2.3Mil unique contributions. Commonplace is accelerating positive change, helping both the private and public sectors to engage with the local communities to help co-design the areas where they live, work and play.
Commonplace has been working alongside the programme partners, in helping them to understand the current public sentiment towards the future of air mobility. They will be going live with their platform at the Urban-Air Port – Air One launch event later this month, with the aim of extracting useful insights to inform key decision making.
Global Partnerships Director
DM-AirTech
Weather solutions and analytics for air mobility planning and operations
DM-AirTech supports the safe and efficient deployment of Urban and Advanced Air Mobility by providing a suite of meteorological data solutions to support key decision makers in the planning and design of infrastructure and flight operations.
Their scalable technology fuses together several filtered meteorological data and computational layers to obtain a 4D reconstruction of the weather at the highest resolution.
Through this programme, DM-AirTech has been working closely with programme partners to test and optimise their VertiPlace solution in UK, which aims to identify optimal locations for vertiports and the flight paths between them, based on weather analysis.
CEO – CTO
Emu Analytics
https://www.emu-analytics.com/
Award-winning Digital Twin software solutions for airports and airline operators.
Emu’s cloud-based Digital Twin software, Flo.w, provides Airports, Airlines and Ground Handlers powerful, real-time analytics and visualisations to aid carbon accounting initiatives, sustainability strategies, autonomous vehicle introduction & monitoring, real-time operational efficiencies, safety monitoring and much more.
Through this programme, Emu have deployed two instances of their platform Flo.w separately for both Glasgow and Heathrow Airports, adapting and advancing it to work with three primary data sources that typically exist at all major airports; real-time telematics, ADS-B and fixed asset data.
Using these three sets of data, in real-time and over historic periods, Emu are analysing how these moving parts utilise the airside space. This in turn provides a range of insights and benefits to the programme partners.
Co-founder & CEO
richard.vilton@emu-analytics.com
Neuron Innovations
Neuron provides the trust layer for mobility and IOT applications.
Neuron provides decentralised networks that connect smart transportation systems and infrastructure to ensure safe, secure and fair access. Its aircraft tracking sensor networks are used by drone companies to prevent mid-air collisions, enabling a range of future industries, from medical deliveries to railway inspections.
Through this programme, Neuron have been trialling their ground based detect and avoid sensor network technology, with a vision of enabling an integrated, shared and safe airspace for the future of air mobility.
Commercial Director
OrxaGrid
IOT Analytics for Low Carbon Energy Optimisation.
Energy Network Operators are struggling to meet the demands of carbon conscious consumers to provide sustainable, affordable and reliable energy. Through IOT sensors and AI Analytics, OrxaGrid provides the decision support insights to Operators to efficiently manage their energy networks and optimise their investment strategies.
OrxaGrid have been working alongside Cranfield University, looking at how their technology can be adapted to the needs of large energy consumers such as business parks and airports, who are at the forefront of adopting low carbon technologies and wish to manage their own grid networks.
Co-founder
R4DAR Technologies
Making Radar Smarter – Resilient BVLOS detect and avoid and navigation.
R4DAR is addressing the safety, efficiency, and sustainability issues associated with the mass adoption of autonomy. Whether it be the safe, reliable operation of autonomous vehicles, intelligent GDPR compliant asset tracking in complex environments or the provision of resilient automated detect and avoid navigation, and surveillance capabilities accelerating the adoption of drones for critical logistic activities.
Using the funding through the programme, R4DAR were able to acquire new radar technology to conduct vertiport assisted landing and airside autonomous vehicle navigation trials at Snowdonia Aerospace, further supporting their technology development roadmap.
Founder
SeeTrue AI
Artificial Intelligence for fast and secure screening.
SeeTrue helps the travel industry make security checkpoints fast and safe in airports, train stations and other venues, improving throughput and operational efficiency while enabling social distancing – using Artificial Intelligence.
SeeTrue’s AI provides automatic threat detection and alarm resolution by connecting to existing X-Ray and CT scanners. It is deployed operationally around the world in airports, mass-transit, maritime ports, critical infrastructure and other facilities.
Through this programme, SeeTrue has been testing the viability and accuracy of their technology through baggage scanning trials, analysing extensive data sets of images provided by the programme partners. The trial also aims to support the development of regulations, needed to regulate the integration of autonomous baggage scanning systems in the UK.
Co-founder & CEO
Sightec
Sightec. Delivering Safer Skies.
Sightec provides a critical navigation and landing solution enabling safe and efficient unmanned aerial missions. Sightec’s NavSight is a GPS-free Visual Situation Awareness system, which reduces the dependency of drones and UAVs on human pilots – without compromising the safety of the aircraft or its surroundings.
Through this programme, Sightec have been showcasing the viability of their solutions, through mapping and test flight demonstrations at Snowdonia Aerospace. Firstly, mapping out the airfield to generate a high-definition map of the landscape, before conducting a secondary flight to capture video footage from selected flight routes to the specifications of the programme partners.
The captured video was then processed offline, where Sightec were able to demonstrate through their Visual Situation Awareness system, how accuratly it analyses and calculates the positioning of the drone’s flight path compared to GPS positioning.
CEO
TEKTowr
SIMTwin. The Immersive, Collaborative, Design Tool for Future Airspace Innovations.
SIMTwin is a multiplayer digital twin of the future airspace offering an extensible marketplace for predictive capabilities and an immersive experience that brings stakeholders intuitively together around a common vision for the future of air mobility.
SIMTwin users are scenario setters, eVTOL vehicle manufacturers, airspace controllers, and infrastructure builders. Furthermore, SIMTwin integrates niche expertise services, such as weather analysis, noise modelling and AI-driven separation management.
Through this programme, TEKTowr has been working alongside the programme partners’ requirements to demonstrate a series of use cases, from simulating EVTOL flight paths at key locations in the UK, through to integration into existing airspace and vehicle noise simulation.
CTO & Founder
Westfield Technology Group
The UK’s leading provider of fully Autonomous Vehicles for first mile – last mile transportation.
Westfield Technology Group has developed the SMART Apron system – a complete solution to transport passengers, bags, cargo and manage Foreign Object Detection at airports.
To date, Westfield have deployed 50 pods throughout the globe from UNESCO World Heritage Sites to international airports, helping to improve aircraft turnaround safety and efficiency.
Through this programme, Westfield has been working with regulators, airports and key stakeholders within the industry to further develop safety cases and working practices to support accelerating the time to market for autonomous airside vehicles. During the programme, Westfield conducted a series of trials on the apron at Snowdonia Aerospace to test how their autonomous systems performed around moving aircraft.
CEO
julian.turner@westfield-sportscars.co.uk
If you have any questions on the programme and how you can get involved. Please reach out to:
Accelerator Programme Lead
Connected Places Catapult
Further Reading & Listening
