Ambular: An Emergency Response Drone
Project Description
https://evtol.news/ambular-drone
https://evtol.news/ambular-20
https://youtu.be/WOJeeya-S4k?si=cQYws-kOoSyp3Le8

"In late 2017, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) started an endeavor to understand the future of aviation. The first guide in that journey was Charles Bombardier, an internationally recognized futurist, who produced hundreds of designs through IMAGINACTIVE, a think-tank focused on envisioning what aircraft could look like ten, twenty of fifty years from now. His mentorship and leadership inspired several staff at ICAO to contribute to the vision, and that exercise gave birth to a variety of crafts, from airships to high flying gliders, to electric Vertical Take-off and Landing vehicles. These ideas were catalogued in the Future of Aviation book and quickly led to the realization that it was not enough to only think of new designs. Their purpose was just as important. This led to the creation of a series of videos and a graphic novel showing the potential that future aircraft have on improving the quality of life.

One key concept is called the Ambular, an eVTOL conceived to rapidly fly a person facing a medical emergency to the hospital. The initial version was published in 2018. It was also featured in a short story from the graphic novel The Future of Aviation. As interested staff at ICAO started to build on the ideas imagined by Charles and IMAGINACTIVE, they also realized that they needed to do some research in order to understand what the various steps in the realization of such concepts were.

It is indeed important for those who set the international standards and recommended practices in aviation to understand the methods, problems, risks and any other aspects that those who build the future of the sector experience when going through the realization process. It it important, but it is not easy… unless we tried to actually build one of the ideas. And that is how the Ambular project was born."

In this aerospace project, you will work in a multidisciplinary team to design, build and test a new class of urban air mobility vehicles for emergency medical transport, i.e. an ambulance drone. You will have the opportunity to participate in various stages of the design and development process, including, but not limited to, aerodynamic testing and analysis, structural design and simulation, and systems integration and optimization. HKUST is a key partner in the Ambular project, and there will be opportunities for interactions with other project partners such as ICAO, EHang, Concordia University, CAACSRI, and IMAGINACTIVE. Further details on the Ambular project can be found here: http://ambular.org/
Supervisor
LI Larry
Quota
4
Course type
UROP1000
UROP1100
UROP2100
UROP3100
UROP3200
UROP4100
Applicant's Roles
Please see Project Description.
Applicant's Learning Objectives
Please see Project Description.
Complexity of the project
Moderate