HeroX is pleased to announce three winners and two honorable mentions for the Sky for All: Air Mobility for 2035 and Beyond challenge.

Winners:

  • 1st place: Team - The Sopranos for their submission “Autonomous Hierarchical Adaptive Air Traffic Control System,” which featured a dynamic, distributed control strategy based on the types of autonomous vehicles in the system. ($10,000)
  • 2nd place: Thomas Dubot for his submission “Clustered Self-Separation out of 4D Bubbles,” which took a systems engineering approach to integrating key aspects of the system, including self-separation, clustering and low-altitude traffic. ($3,000)
  • 3rd place: Team - Maiden Voyage for their submission “DAS: Dynamic Airspace System,” which considered a flocking approach to global flight organization, with reliance on segregated airspace constructs. ($2,000)


Honorable Mentions:

  • Eduardo Acosta for his submission “ZenithNet: A New Foundation for the 2035 Airspace,” which focused on Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast and data communications. ($500)
  • The Vreeland Institute for their submission “Airspace 2035: An Open, Distributed Network System,” which offered a fully integrated system characterization based on open systems interconnection. ($500)


The Sky for All challenge was launched in December 2015 to develop ideas and technologies contributing to a clean-slate, revolutionary design and concepts of operations for the airspace of the future. The challenge asked solvers to think outside the current air traffic management system, and consider how to manage crowded skies, autonomous operations and cyber security of the system.

Designing a new, comprehensive, end-to-end air transportation system is an enormous undertaking, requiring long-term systematic research, development and implementation effort. The enthusiasm and the breadth of ideas in the entries were impressive.

Thanks to all the solvers who participated!