Future Air Mobility UAM Prototype Development and Flight
Duration: January 2022 – December 2022
Lead Organization: VSPACE
Role: Project Lead for Full Aircraft Development
Project Overview
This project marks South Korea’s first full-stack development of a single-seat manned eVTOL prototype. I led the full-cycle system integration effort—ranging from structural design, welding, flight controller configuration, battery and BMS development, to actual test flights.
The aircraft was a multicopter-type UAM platform, developed from TRL 4 to TRL 5. Key functions—attitude control, propulsion redundancy, and safety verification—were system-integrated and validated in both tethered and untethered test environments.
My Contributions
- Planned structural layout based on mass and center-of-gravity distribution
- Hand-built the airframe through manual TIG welding (no jigs used)
- Integrated 24S high-voltage battery system with STM32-based BMS and UAVCAN communication
- Configured Pixhawk/Cube controller, tuned PID parameters for stable vertical flight
- Performed tethered safety tests, fault handling (motor loss), and hover flight demonstrations
- Led regulatory alignment effort based on AC 21.17-4 for experimental certification
Impact
This prototype validated the feasibility of scaling and standardizing manned eVTOLs under Korea's airworthiness frameworks. It contributed to national R&D benchmarking and was featured in Korea’s first urban air mobility demonstration.
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