On July 17, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive directive to establish the Advanced Air Mobility Initiative, a program that would further the state of Michigan’s advanced aerial vehicular capabilities and support infrastructure expansion in the aviation sector. The Advanced Aerial Mobility Activation Fund, which will receive a second round of funding through the directive, funds projects for drones, helicopters and other electric aerial vehicles.
The executive directive also allocated more than $4.1 million to four new projects supporting these initiatives, including CVS Health, Traverse Connect, Jack Demmer Automotive Group and M-Air.
M-Air will become a new 40-mile air mobility corridor, or dedicated transportation route, that will connect University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus to Michigan Central in Detroit. M-Air will be a part of M-City, a public-private partnership within the University’s Transportation Research Institute that advances innovation in transportation and aerial mobility.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, M-Air director Venkat Viswanathan said M-City was born to be a living lab where students, researchers and other experts could collaborate on different aerial mobility projects and test them in one space.
“The core idea being that we have amazing students and postdocs that come to University of Michigan, and in order for them to get experience beyond classroom learning and research that they do get access to a facility that has the ability to test things at a larger scale than you can typically do in a classroom setting or in a research setting,” Viswanathan said.
Engineering senior Eli Goreta, vice-president of Michigan Autonomous Aerial Vehicles, told The Daily she hopes the M-Air mobility corridor will unlock new opportunities to test different aerial vehicular projects at the University.
“I think when it’s out, it’ll definitely have a huge impact,” Goreta said. “Drone application, currently, really involves limit testing, both on distance and flight time. The way that conventional testing is currently happening is usually in a pretty confined space, usually just like a farm or a small airfield, or M-Air in a very closed, confined space, but allowing testing to take place over a very long distance with limited restriction will definitely have a huge help on long range, efficient drone research.”
Goreta said the addition of funding from the state of Michigan will strengthen the existing relationship between the private and public sectors, which is vital for advancements in aerial mobility.
“The more money that we can put into drone research, the better,” Goreta said. “But I think a technical partnership with more of a corporate setting would be useful, because then research can be more applicable towards actual use cases.”
In an interview with The Daily, Justine Johnson, chief mobility officer at Michigan Economic Development Corporation, said increased funding for the Advanced Air Mobility Initiative will introduce new employment opportunities for Michigan citizens, assist workers with a background in manufacturing for a transition into aviation and connect university students with employment opportunities.
“M-Air (is) really focusing on having a space with that connects Detroit to Ann Arbor in a very different way, really facilitating the role of bringing in startups, but also exposing students at all levels — from K through 12 — to those who are at the university level, about opportunities and career paths within Advanced Air Mobility and emerging aviation,” Johnson said.
Johnson also said there is a lot of potential for aerial vehicles to be applied across a variety of industries and to bridge gaps between land and aerial vehicular resources.
“I do think that at the end of the day, this is about having an integrated mobility ecosystem,” Johnson said. “This is not like auto versus aviation. It’s not that, right? It’s, how do these two complement each other?”
Johnson said she looks forward to seeing how Michigan will advance in its capacity for aerial aviation innovation through the executive directive.
“This is such a big opportunity for the state of Michigan to demonstrate to the world how we lean into manufacturing, how we’re good at it, the jobs that are going to be created, the industry that will be attracted and how we’re connecting the dots to really make sure we have an integrated mobility ecosystem,” Johnson said.
Daily Staff Reporter Claudia Minetti can be reached at cminetti@umich.edu.
