The future of air travel is looking electric. Wisk Aero, a company that’s been making waves with its autonomous and all-electric aircraft, just partnered with NASA on a five-year research deal. Their goal? To make autonomous flights a reality by the end of the decade.
Wisk Aero is a subsidiary of Boeing, and its main model, the Cora, has been around for over seven years. It’s an all-electric aircraft that’s been through several generations of updates. Back in 2020, Wisk joined NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility project to tackle the industry’s biggest challenges and lay the groundwork for future autonomous passenger flights.
The two have been working together ever since, developing guidelines for safely integrating autonomous aircraft into urban air mobility operations. Now, they’re taking their partnership to the next level with a new five-year agreement. This time, they’re focusing on critical research led by NASA’s Air Traffic Management Exploration project.
So, what’s on the to-do list? Optimizing airspace and designing routes for highly automated UAM operations, establishing safety requirements for autonomous flights in urban areas, and developing communication protocols for air traffic control. To get there, Wisk and NASA will use advanced simulation and Live Virtual Constructive environments, which combine real flights with simulated airspace.
Erick Corona, Wisk’s Director of Airspace Operational Integration, says this new agreement is a big step forward for the company and the UAM industry as a whole. With NASA’s simulation capabilities, they can accelerate the development of their autonomous systems and ensure safe and efficient integration into the US airspace by the end of the decade.
The Wisk and NASA teams have already started working together, exploring how instrument flight procedures and advanced technologies can come together to enable safe autonomous passenger flights by 2030. It’s an exciting time for air travel, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.