Roads and Transport Authority Dubai and VIMANA, the blockchain airspace category creator, are in talks to take forward the latter’s fleet of vertical take off and landing autonomous aerial vehicles (VTOL AAVs).
A dominant player in the $1tn blockchain airspace market, VIMANA has designed a breakthrough, patent-pending, technology that allows the company to combine capabilities of an airplane, helicopter, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a single platform, and use blockchain technology to operate its aircraft and enable blockchain applications in the air at the same time. VIMANAs fleet of vertical take off and landing autonomous aerial vehicles (VTOL AAVs) are a marvel of aerospace engineering, designed to be localised by Smart Cities, like Dubai, via licensing deals, to enable local mass production. VIMANA is one of only a handful of aerospace companies in the world that have a flying VTOL AAV prototype that was purpose built for urban use or use as an air taxi, air limo or as a dual-purpose passenger and cargo air vehicle.
Images via VIMANA
Evgeni Borisov, VIMANA CEO and co-founder, commented in an exclusive interview with Logistics News Middle East: “In order to make a life-scale economic model, you need to develop the VTOL to suit any environment and be very efficient. I’m not belittling any competitor, because I deeply appreciate any one who puts in effort in aerospace, but a lot of our competition is simply praying for a ‘magic battery’ to make this machine work. We’ve a designed a scheme which will always be on the top of the performance curve, since we’ve efficiently understood the physics of the air and 95% of our flight functions like an airplane, taking off or landing like a helicopter.”
He added: “We love the pace in UAE. The general political environment here is smooth and quick, unlike a lot of other countries where things get held up in the weight of regulations. People in UAE, similar to those in Russia and India, seem to share a common history of ‘flying vehicles’ in their mythology. All big things have small beginnings, and regulations will follow, especially since the UAE is keen on seeing beyond the horizon.”
Kirill Nikolaev, board member at VIMANA, remarked: “Things are still developing, we haven’t laid down the complete framework of any collaboration. We’re on the same page with RTA, but we’ll make official announcements soon.” VIMANA has been discussing cooperation opportunities with RTA since November 2017, following VIMANAs introduction within the Arab Future Cities Summit in October 2017.
RTA previously launched a prototype supplied by Volocopter, a two-seater autonomous air taxi (AAT), capable of transporting people without human intervention or a pilot. There was no follow up on further collaborations between RTA and Volocopter, with VIMANA possibly emerging as the technically superior answer to UAE’s vision of flying vehicles.