California-based Joby Aviation, an aerial mobility company, recently remotely operated its supervised autonomous J208 aircraft in Utah, the penultimate stop on the company’s Electric Skies tour.
The coast-to-coast tour covered a dozen cities and 5,541 nautical miles. The Utah Department of Transportation hosted the company. Autonomous aircraft could be part of a connected transportation system linking communities to existing infrastructure.
“As the lead state of the uFLY coalition, Utah is actively designing the future of flight,” Bonny Simi, Joby Aviation president of operations, said. “By gathering real-world flight data on the next generation of aerospace here, we are proving that multi-state collaboration is the key to scaling advanced air mobility. Utah is one of a handful of states setting the blueprint that the rest of the nation will follow to integrate these aircraft safely and responsibly.”
uFLY is a partnership between Arizona, Idaho, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah and industry partners and research institutions to test new aviation technologies and gather data that will help shape those technologies.
Utah state leaders hope to position the state as a place where autonomous aircraft can fly. The state has a robust aerospace and defense supply chain and a growing ecosystem of companies developing advanced aviation and uncrewed aircraft technologies.