In a return to normal times, VFS held its sixth annual autonomous VTOL session at the newly renamed Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) XPONENTIAL 2022 in Orlando, Florida, on April 26. Unlike previous years, this was a paid program and it delivered outstanding content for the attendees. This year, the panel, "Delivering on Autonomous Vertical Flight," was expanded to a half-day program with top-notch speakers from industry and government, broken into two panels. The first panel, on operations, featured Sterling Alley from the US Air Force Agility Prime program, Jacob Rutledge of United Parcel Service (UPS) Flight Forward, Andy Lacher from NASA Langley, Amanda Boekholt from the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation and Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS), and Robert Roedts of Columbia Helicopters.The panel discussed the research and development activities around fully autonomous aircraft and accelerating the enabling technologies to maturity. As initial use cases emerge, among them both military and commercial logistics, leaders in government research, technology development and aircraft design discussed the progress being made.As with the previous five annual events, the program was organized by VFS members Ajay Sehgal (KBR) and Dr. Barbara Lindauer (Sikorsky), and moderated by Graham Warwick of Aviation Week. VFS thanks all of our organizers and panelists who made the panels so successful!
展开▼
