Korea’s UAM (urban air mobility) initiative has taken a step closer to reality with the successful completion of the first demonstration round, according to participating companies on Wednesday and reported in the Korea JoongAng Daily.
According to the news article “Hyundai Motor, Korean Air and other collaborators announced that they have successfully completed the first step of the K-UAM Grand Challenge, a state-backed UAM commercialisation project.
“The event, which took place at an aviation testing centre in Goheung, South Jeolla for five weeks, tested the operation of the aircraft and its traffic management. Infrastructure such as the vertiport, where the UAM takes off and lands vertically, was tested as well.
“Hyundai Motor said it tested its own MaaS (mobility as a service), a comprehensive platform for all types of transportation from conventional vehicles to UAM, during the project’s first phase. It also collected data on factors such as weather and wind speed that could affect the operation of UAMs.
“Hyundai Motor is one five participants of the K-UAM One Team consortium formed in 2021 along with Korean Air, KT, Incheon International Airport Corporation and Hyundai Engineering & Construction to verify the aircraft’s safety and establish industry standards optimized for Korea.
“In the project, Korean Air was in charge of traffic management and control systems, utilising its decades of experience operating airplanes. It verified its own UAM-dedicated operation control system and traffic management system.
“KT set up a platform that can process data on traffic and safety in real time while Hyundai Engineering & Construction analysed the demonstration of the vertiport in various simulations.”
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(Image: K-UAM)
