Developers of eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft have attracted billions of dollars of private investment, driven by their promise of on-demand, point-to-point air travel.
Just last week, Joby Aviation’s electric air taxi conducted a series of demonstration flights across New York City’s network of heliports and John F. Kennedy International Airport (KJFK) on Long Island. But a new technology could extend air taxi operations to shopping centers, hospitals, parking garages, and any number of non-airport sites.
Without vertiports—electrified takeoff and landing hubs—electric air taxis will be limited to existing helipads and airport FBOs, undermining their core benefit and turning them into little more than fancy helicopters. The problem is that vertiports are often expensive to develop, and insurers are hesitant to take on the risk that comes with a new technology.
Australia’s Aeroberm believes it has the solution. The company on Tuesday announced the commercial launch of its vertipad technology, which it has offered to participants in the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP)—a three-year air taxi flight test campaign beginning later this year.
Though American airports, heliports, and FBOs have been exploring vertiports for years, none are operational in the U.S. Aeroberm claims its modular, off-the-shelf solution tackles the main pain points for those projects—safety, accessibility, and cost.
The company says the system is aircraft-agnostic and could accommodate eVTOL air taxis operated by Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, Beta Technologies, Boeing’s Wisk Aero, or any number of other developers.
Those companies have spent the past few years securing agreements with airports and FBOs for bespoke vertiport projects. Aeroberm proposes a simpler pathway.
Safety-Proofing Vertiports
The system’s biggest innovation is its ability to dissipate downwash and outwash—the spinning columns of air that eVTOL rotors blast during takeoff and landing, which can be powerful enough to knock a person to the ground.
Per research published in 2024, the FAA found that eVTOL models produced outwash up to 60 mph at a distance of about 100 feet. The agency’s Engineering Brief 105A (EB 105A) is the most up-to-date guidance on vertiport design in the U.S. Under EB 105A, for safety reasons, outwash at the outer boundary of a vertiport cannot exceed 34.5 mph.
That leaves developers with two choices—build a massive vertiport, which can be prohibitively large or expensive in urban areas, or reduce wind speed on the ground.
Aeroberm achieves the latter using fractal panel technology that it revealed Tuesday. In mathematics, fractal patterns are identical at different scales. The most famous example is the Mandelbrot set—zooming into it reveals smaller copies of the original pattern.
Similarly, the Aeroberm uses a self-similar arrangement of vanes that repeats at different sizes. That means there is always a right-sized vane to capture the differently sized vortices produced by eVTOL rotors. This allows the system to break up air columns and direct the energy downward beneath an elevated steel pad, absorbing it more effectively than vertiport systems that direct it outward, Aeroberm said.
Per a peer-reviewed paper by researchers at Australia’s Swinburne University, released Tuesday, compared to conventional surfaces, fractal panels dissipate energy at a rate up to 90 percent higher. That translates to less outwash and smaller vertiport safety areas, opening up operations from the rooftops of business parks, hospitals, transit hubs, or even floating pontoons on the water.
Clem Newton-Brown, founder and CEO of Aeroberm and parent company Skyportz, told FLYING that an aircraft the size of Archer or Joby’s would require a final approach and takeoff area (FATO) measuring 22.5 by 22.5 meters, surrounded by a massive safety zone, to meet the FAA’s 34.5 mph threshold. With the Aeroberm, that safety zone could be a fraction of the size.
Newton-Brown said the company has provisional patent protection globally for the vertipad system, which shields its intellectual property. It has priority rights to proceed to final patents, preventing another company from lodging a competing application as it completes the process.
Aeroberm said the fractal panels reduce not only outwash but ground-level noise. That solves another problem for electric air taxis, which are designed to be quiet at cruising altitude (typically a few thousand feet) but can be a nuisance on the ground, where people are within earshot.
Another challenge involves containing potential fires from lithium-ion batteries, which power most eVTOL designs. Aeroberm’s solution is to literally dunk the aircraft in a tank, like a carnival game. The company believes fully immersing the aircraft is the only way to prevent thermal runaway, a violent chain reaction that can cause temperatures to rise uncontrollably.
“According to current research and fire fighting techniques, battery immersion is the best (and only) way to stop high-energy battery fires,” David Ison, founder of the Aerospace and Multimodal Research Group, told FLYING.
With eVTOL manufacturers still years away from scaled production, every second of downtime will matter. A fire that shuts down operations for hours or days could be untenable.
Air Taxis for All
Aeroberm said the technology’s modular, off-the-shelf design makes it cheaper to install than a bespoke vertiport. The company offers paid site assessments and has a network of partners that provide charging infrastructure, airspace management, weather intelligence, and a vertiport operating system.
It has partnerships to deploy the system in six countries. Enter Ave of Tallahassee, Florida, is Aeroberm’s first U.S. partner. But Newton-Brown is in Florida to secure additional manufacturing and distribution agreements as it looks to deploy in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. American air taxi operators could be the first to deploy it for activities under the FAA’s eIPP.
Skyportz will handle deployment in Australia, with an eye toward the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane. The technology’s development is backed by a $250,000 Australian government grant awarded in 2025. The company has other partners in China, Japan, India, and Oman and is seeking more in European cities such as London and Paris.
With the Swinburne University study evidencing Aeroberm’s outwash and noise mitigation abilities, Newton-Brown believes the company will be able to secure more competitive premiums and lower deductibles for operators who use the system. Through a partnership with insurance underwriter Advanced Technology Assurance, it plans to offer insurance from the jump.
That kind of risk mitigation could accelerate vertiport projects underway at Orlando International Airport (KMCO) and other sites across the U.S.