All-Electric Propulsion for Heavy-Duty Urban Aerial Vehicles-Video

Abstract: As we are heading towards all-electric intercity passenger aircraft, emerging Urban Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), unmanned or manned, serve as stepping stones to demonstrate start-of-the-art electrification technology. We are already familiar with light-weight drones in cinematography, entertainment, and industrial inspections. However, technology challenges still exist in larger scale (10x-100x) commercial applications such as package delivery drones or passenger flying taxis. These sci-fi like urban aerial mobility solutions are not far from reality but already in much desire in this COVID era when non-human-contact quick point to point transports can serve many needs. Though under the aviation category, UAV’s exhibit many different characteristics from more electric aircraft (MEA), and thus face unique design requirements.

In this webinar, we will dive deep into such heavy duty all electric UAVs, and particularly their propulsion systems. The webinar will break into several subtopics: 1) Unique technology needs and challenges in such power electronics based powertrains 2) Propulsion system architectures and multi-physics modeling 3) A machine-learning enabled automated and efficient system design approach 4) A fully integrated fault-tolerant motor drive 5) High-conversion high-voltage power converters 6) Future opportunities in component/system design and broader energy impact.