VIMANA Blockchain Airspace. Clear Prop !
Last year was an exciting roller-coaster for VIMANA for several reasons.
Blockchain market went through an intense and transformative period during 2018 and today continues to evolve. It is bringing new opportunities along with new regulations, while providing increased transparency and protection for investors, re-building trust, reducing speculation and the frustration as a result.
Just like most companies who worked on creating products and services using blockchain, we’ve faced challenges in convincing the market that decentralization in the air traffic management was key to bring Urban Air Mobility to life. At the same time, we continued to develop the world’s first and only transportation protocol launching it in a test-net environment. What separated VIMANA’s protocol from many others is that it was designed and developed with transportation and urban air mobility in mind. Specifically, we are able to support a dynamic data validation and exchange of data packets across the airspace between moving aircraft, we segment data based on unique parameters of each aircraft and local government requirements, our protocol enables governments and cities to retain control of the airspace while creating a new communication network across the globe via a public and private blockchains.
Our vision for VIMANA Blockchain Airspace Network and a decentralized airspace was validated when NASA announced its partnership with Hyperledger late last year, to develop a decentralized air traffic management solution. While I won’t comment on specific reasons, using the space terminology, VIMANA is “light years” ahead of this initiative, as an open architecture protocol.
Validation for the future of airspace and VIMANA’s vision for deployment of the protocol continued in conversations with several top research organizations, such as Gartner, Frost & Sullivan, Roland Berger and institutional research from Morgan Stanley. All of whom have acknowledged that the future of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles lies with a software protocol with a network effect — precisely what VIMANA has built.
But the protocol is only part of VIMANA’s story, and our development work has continued on Vertical Take-Off & Landing (VTOL) aircraft as well. We moved to a flying prototype 3.0, which has proved our patented technology and holy grail of such aircraft — transitioning smoothly from a vertical take-off into a horizontal flight. In January 2019 USPTO has released our umbrella patent, securing VIMANA’s footprint among leading VTOL AAV companies. VIMANA’s aircraft has always played a critical role in the initial roll-out of the protocol. It is an ideal carrier for the blockchain nodes and as a turnkey solution can be easily deployed across the world. in Q4 2018 we also developed hardware prototype nodes to be used on all Autonomous Aerial Vehicles.
VIMANA’s traction continued with the go-to market strategy as well. We are solution with a network effect at its core, as such, we had to look beyond technology development and consider the real-life application and implementation models. We picked Smart Cities (local governments and regions that not only embrace Urban Air Mobility but also have financial resources to deploy such initiatives) as ideal partners to roll-out VIMANA’s technology. In March 2019 we signed an MOU with a large region in Western Europe that will provide us with dedicated airfield and regulated airspace, R&D and testing facilities, where VIMANA will be opening its first joint venture manufacturing operations HQ. The region will also be the first to experience a long-distance fully autonomous aerial flight. Business development and partnerships are also continuing with several state governments in the United States that embrace Urban Air Mobility and have direct use cases for autonomous aircraft, and with countries in the Middle East, where adoption of such technology is more prominent.
There are currently over 300 companies in the Urban Air Mobility space. Some are building hardware, some are building software, a few are services-oriented companies. VIMANA is a “hardware for the software and software for the hardware” solution that fits well with long-term infrastructure investment opportunities and investors who understand the network effect and impact of this technology. Our team is working diligently on the protocol, VTOL hardware, securing partnerships and raising infrastructure capital. I will continue to provide periodic updates and look forward to seeing you join me and my team on this path.
