Tag: Bell Nexus

Bell Unveils Manufacturing Facility for its Future Vertical Lift Aircraft

12 August 2020 || 3 min read

Bell Textron Inc. unveiled today its new 140,000-square-foot Manufacturing Technology Center (MTC) in Fort Worth, Texas. The MTC is an innovative proving ground where Bell will test and refine technologies and processes—demonstrating manufacturing readiness and ability to successfully build and support Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft. The facility provides capabilities that span all of Bell’s core manufacturing of rotor and drive systems,...

Bell Unveils Manufacturing Facility for its Future Vertical Lift Aircraft

12 August 2020 || 3 min read

Since establishing a footprint in North Texas in 1951, Bell’s facilities have been a hub for new technology in aviation. Many milestones, including first flight of the XV-15, V-22, 609 and 407, took place in the DFW metroplex. According to Bell, building FVL aircraft will require the right blend of investment in manufacturing technology and a quality workforce, as well as strong partnerships with the state and community.

“The MTC is the next step in successfully deploying new manufacturing technologies and processes into Bell’s future factories,” said Glenn Isbell, vice president, Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing Innovation. “These future factories working together with our teammates and suppliers, will be designed to enable high-quality, high-rate production of the Bell V-280 Valor, Bell 360 Invictus and other future aircraft.”

An artist’s rendering of the potential interior of Bell’s new facility.

Digital connectivity and integration form the backbone of the MTC. The entire facility will be monitored and controlled by its own IT Network; Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and cybersecurity systems that manage the inflow and outflow of materials, as well as the movement of activity throughout the factory. By deploying a networked software infrastructure, the MTC will produce a digital twin of itself that gives managers a common operating picture of the building, the equipment and the processes.

Why it matters: In tandem with its development of Future Vertical Lift aircraft for military applications, Bell has been applying similar technologies to the advancement of urban air mobility vehicles. Notably, the company has already unveiled prototypes of the Bell Nexus passenger eVTOLs as well as the APT cargo eVTOL, which may be developed or produced in facilities like the MCT.

The Bell Nexus, a vertical lift passenger aircraft currently being developed by Bell.

Related:

Source // Bell Flight press release

Bell’s Smart City Showcases Urban Air Mobility Operations and Logistics

29 January 2020 || 4 min read

At the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) show in Las Vegas in early January, Bell demonstrated a model-sized cityscape with scale flying versions of its Nexus passenger air taxi and Autonomous Pod Transport (APT) operating with Bell’s AerOS urban air mobility operating system. Calling it a “smart city ecosystem,” Bell president and CEO Mitch Snyder explained, “This year, we’re demonstrating what...

Bell’s Smart City Showcases Urban Air Mobility Operations and Logistics

29 January 2020 || 4 min read

Bell Unveils All-Electric Nexus 4EX at CES 2020

Calling it a “smart city ecosystem,” Bell president and CEO Mitch Snyder explained, “This year, we’re demonstrating what governing, operating, working, and living in a smart city will look like.”

Bell’s service is powered by Bell AerOS, a proprietary system running on Microsoft Azure created to manage fleet information, observe aircraft health, and manage throughput of goods, products and predictive data and maintenance. This digital infrastructure is prevalent in Bell’s Smart City vision at the show and serves the company’s goal of providing Mobility as a Service (MaaS).

Bell has also settled on a smaller version of its Nexus passenger vehicle, with four rotors instead of the six previously shown at CES 2019. The aircraft features Bell’s signature powered-lift concept with four tilting ducted fans that can be configured as hybrid-electric or all-electric. Bell believes this design unlocks the key for all electric technology, but the vehicle will remain “propulsion agnostic” depending on customer needs.

Bell's APT 70 (left) and APT 20 (right) eVTOL prototypes

Bell’s APT70 (left) and APT20 (right). // AIN Online

At CES, the smart city demo included tablet stations where visitors could interact with AerOS, choosing departure and destination, and then watching in real-time how the flying models interacted. The AerOS software constantly assesses demand across the scale-size city and deploys vehicles accordingly, while also taking into account problems that inevitably come up during passenger and cargo flying operations, such as weather events that might require all vehicles to land immediately. AerOS uses goal-seeking optimization algorithms and artificial intelligence to anticipate passenger behavior and desires as determined from the booking engine and the vehicle’s needs for battery recharging to meet the flight schedule. “We are working on modeling simulation tools now. We need to do better than have a good model, but we have tools in-process to refine and update that without an army of PhD data scientists. This solves the digital backbone need of aerial mobility.”

Why it’s important: In a world where nearly 70 percent of the population will be living in urban areas by 2050 and cities are outgrowing their current transportations systems, the need for urban mobility solutions has never been greater. Fortunately, the transportation industry has reached an inflection point, and many of the world’s top minds are working toward solutions for the optimal smart city design. Bell is bringing a clear mission of finding solutions to the infrastructure challenges of tomorrow’s transportation networks.

Sources // AINonline; Bell

Bell Unveils All-Electric Nexus 4EX at CES 2020

08 January 2020 || 4 min read

Bell’s new four-rotor version of its Nexus eVTOL is optimized for intra-urban mobility. The Consumer Electronics Show 2019 was a hotbed for new aerial mobility technologies, and this year is culminating in a similarly exciting event for breakthrough UAM innovations. Last year, we saw the initial unveiling of Bell’s Nexus prototype which featured six ducted fans with variable tilt angles...

Bell Unveils All-Electric Nexus 4EX at CES 2020

08 January 2020 || 4 min read

Bell’s new four-rotor version of its Nexus eVTOL is optimized for intra-urban mobility.

The Consumer Electronics Show 2019 was a hotbed for new aerial mobility technologies, and this year is culminating in a similarly exciting event for breakthrough UAM innovations. Last year, we saw the initial unveiling of Bell’s Nexus prototype which featured six ducted fans with variable tilt angles to facilitate vertical takeoff and landing. The original prototype, now dubbed the Nexus 6HX due to its six hybrid-electric powered rotors, is accompanied by a fully-electric version.

Whereas the Nexus 6HX touts a range of up to 150 miles, the vehicle was originally optimized with inter-urban mobility, which necessitated the use of hybrid-electric propulsion. The specialized Nexus 4EX is instead designed specifically with up to 60-mile intra-urban flights in mind, which enabled the powerplant to be completely reliant on the latest battery technologies.

Bell CEO Mitch Snyder commented on the design choices that ultimately led to a reduced fan count and the hurdle to an all-electric powerplant:

One vehicle was compromising the attributes of each, and so we went at it in a different direction,” said Snyder. “We looked at . . . what was coming from the market and what they wanted. And we were also able to progress our technology further and understand it and say, ‘You know what? I think we can build an all-electrical [aircraft].’

Snyder also spoke about the emphasis Bell is placing on safety, and the path it plans to take to achieve EASA’s level of safety recently identified in its certification standards for small VTOL aircraft. “With this form of transportation, we want to make it safe, we want to make it quiet, [and] we want to make it clean and green,” said Snyder. “And the most important thing here, besides the safety, is we want to make it affordable, [and] accessible to everyone.”

More efficient operation was the driver for fewer ducts in the Nexus design, said Scott Drennan, Bell’s VP of Innovation. Bell Image

Bell is looking to have a certified system ready to serve the public in the middle to late 2020s, with a demonstrator to “come in appropriately” between now and then. In the interim, the company plans to continue technological development in venues such as its Systems Integration Lab (SIL), as well as regulatory development by working with the FAA to level-set all aerial mobility infrastructure to a common vision.

Why it’s important: Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are coming to the realization that the demands of an eVTOLs powerplant are largely determined by the missions it is intended to serve. As the industry hones in to what the market is demanding of a new aerial mobility service, more OEMs will under an optimization of their vehicles to make best use of electric propulsion technologies where applicable.

Sources // Bell; Vertical Mag

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Tag: Bell Nexus

Bell Unveils Manufacturing Facility for its Future Vertical Lift Aircraft

Bell Unveils Manufacturing Facility for its Future Vertical Lift Aircraft

Bell’s Smart City Showcases Urban Air Mobility Operations and Logistics

Bell’s Smart City Showcases Urban Air Mobility Operations and Logistics

Bell Unveils All-Electric Nexus 4EX at CES 2020

Bell Unveils All-Electric Nexus 4EX at CES 2020

Bell’s new four-rotor version of its Nexus eVTOL is optimized for intra-urban mobility.

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