Michigan’s most populous city is becoming a hive of “advanced air mobility” innovation, aided by the state, and other public and private sector partners.
The Michigan Advanced Air Mobility Initiative, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced in July, will be developed by the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification (OFME), which will work with state agencies to develop use cases for drones and establish the state as a place for advanced air mobility startups.
Now, state officials are getting the word out to agency leaders and private-sector companies alike.
“We’re asking, what are your big challenges that are impacting you, as a department? And not a challenge of the future, but a challenge of today. And how might advanced air mobility be a solution,” explained Justine Johnson, chief mobility officer with the Michigan Economic Development Corp., (MEDC) said during a panel Tuesday hosted by Forth Mobility, an electric transportation advocacy and policy group.
MEDC is partnering with multiple departments across the state to better understand how they could put drone technology to use, including Michigan State Police and the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Environment.
“We’re putting out different calls to the industry to say, hey, does anyone have a solution, or example, how we can do inspections of roads and tunnels more efficiently with a drone?” Johnson said. “Ideally, we want to get to a point where we’re starting to bring the innovation to government, and having government become a first customer of that technology.”
The city of Detroit is also becoming a top player in the area of drone technology. Michigan Central, a 30-acre transportation innovation and economic development campus, anchored by the restored 1913 Michigan Central Station, is home base for nearly a dozen drone startups.
“Some of them are flying. Some of them are not yet flying. Some of them are flying elsewhere, but they still want to be in the physical ecosystem here because of the work we’re doing,” said Matt Whitaker, director of the mobility innovation platform at Michigan Central.
Much of the drone activity is operating out of Michigan Central’s Newlab, an existing restored three-story building on the Michigan Central campus, with work areas for startups; prototype building shops, complete with metal-working and other equipment; and a pre-production shop in the basement.
Michigan Central, in partnership with the Michigan Department of Transportation, created the Advanced Aerial Innovation Region, a drone testing zone with a three-mile radius. To date, Michigan Central has facilitated more than 800 drone flights, according to officials.
On the 12th floor of Michigan Central Station is the Aerial Ops Center, which places drone operators high above the ground to keep their eyes on the devices.
“The unique nature of the station is there’s no other tall building around until you get to downtown,” Whitaker said.
“You can run a drone business just standing up on that floor before you ever get those BVLOS capabilities,” he added, using the shorthand for Beyond Visual Line of Sight, an advanced drone operations designation.
Some of the drone use cases being developed at Michigan Central can be categorized into three buckets: data, delivery and defense.
The data use case centers on the role of a drone as a mobile sensor, which could be a camera used to aid in building or bridge inspections.
“When we talk about the areas, data, delivery and defense, I’m most excited about the data, just because what it really means is there’s a thousand companies out there whose business models can be reinvented,” Whitaker said. “It becomes a tool that can be applied to a million different things.”
Michigan Central is known for transportation innovation in more areas than just drones; it is home to startups exploring areas like in-road car charging, among others. The organization is also developing a multimodal transportation hub, to become a platform for testing new innovation related to mobility.
There is a lot of “transferrable capability” between the automotive and drone industries, Whitaker said, adding that Michigan Central is focused on helping “all forms of mobility innovation take root.”
“It’s exciting that we have all those baseline capabilities,” he said. “Now we just need to figure out the right way to tie all those pieces together.”
