On Friday, 9th of February 2024, Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) was honoured to welcome Minister Jack Chambers, the Minister of State at the Department of Transport. While Minister Chambers has previously visited our facilities, the FMCI team took this renewed opportunity to discuss our plans for Advanced Air Mobility in Ireland, legislative support of automated road vehicles, and plans for the Transport Research Area (TRA) conference taking place in Dublin in April 2024.
As part of the visit, the Minister met with senior representatives from Tesla Ireland. The conversation revolved around the adoption of EVs in Ireland and Tesla’s role in enabling it. FMCI’s facilities support this mission, acting as a base where Tesla can service customers’ cars. FMCI is also home to Tesla’s first self-service test driving centre.
During his visit, Minister Jack Chambers met with Provizio, another company supported by FMCI. In addition to showcasing their advanced 5D perception radar technology, Provizio highlighted the value and significance of having FMCI to support indigenous startups, facilitate their product development, and maximize their advantages within the FMCI ecosystem.
After meeting FMCI’s ecosystem of mobility innovators, FMCI CEO Russell Vickers presented FMCI’s own research and innovation activities. Vickers shared FMCI’s vision to enable Air Taxi R&D activities in the region, showing a preview of our next phase of development towards a full scale Vertiport at FMCI.
As coordinator of ÉALÚ-AER project, our COO, Dr. Wassim Derguech, expanded on FMCI’s existing AAM research endeavours. Derguech showcased the project’s objectives around the deployment of U-space services in Shannon with the support of the project consortium members. The ÉALÚ-AER project will be an enabling building block of the Vertiport in Shannon. The project will be one of the demonstrations at the TRA in Dublin this April.
"TRA is one of the largest events organised by the European Commission and attracts highly influential stakeholders in the transport domain from academia, policy makers and industry. We want TRA to be our stage to showcase how Ireland is a hub of innovations for advanced land and air mobility"
About ÉALÚ-AER
ÉALÚ-AER is one of the first European Digital Sky Demonstrators to focus on U-space and Urban Air Mobility as part of the European ATM Master Plan designed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU). SESAR JU aims at accelerating through research and innovation the delivery of an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Digital European Sky.
Digital Sky Demonstrators, such as ÉALÚ-AER, are high-level Technology Readiness Level (TRL 7-8) projects that are funded in collaboration with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) under the Connected Europe Facility (CEF) funding instrument.
ÉALÚ-AER partners include: FMCI (coordinator), Collins Aerospace, The Shannon Airport Group, Avtrain, DeepBlue, Manna, AirNav Ireland and Spright.
The ÉALÚ-AER Project is co-funded by the European Union under the Connecting Europe Facility programme, managed by CINEA, and supported by the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking.
For more details about the project, please follow this link: http://ealu-aer.eu/
