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Nanjing Yufeng Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Yufeng Intelligent”) is a company that has been established for over five years. The team consists of only ten people. Last year, they received a development request and launched the industry’s first safety airbag specifically for eVTOLs last month. Once the product entered the market launch stage, the orders in negotiation exceeded twenty.
A two-meter-high extreme test
eVTOL, which stands for “Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircraft”, is also known as “flying car”. It is an electric aircraft that can take off and land without the need for a runway. In recent years, these ultra-lightweight aircraft have developed rapidly both domestically and internationally. Some foreign enterprises have already obtained sales licenses and their orders have been placed several years in advance; domestic leading enterprises like Yingwu Intelligent have also delivered dozens of sets of products and have achieved regular operation and experience in some scenic areas.
However, a core issue has always remained: Flying is not the hardest part; making people dare to fly and feel safe when flying is the key. Especially the safety protection aspect, there has never been a mature solution for a long time. Yifeng Intelligent aims to fill this gap.
Not long ago, a test conducted in the Science City of Jiangbei New District proved that their product had taken a crucial step forward. That evening, a crane slowly lifted an eVTOL produced by Yingwu Intelligent, raising it two meters off the ground. From an industry perspective, a height of two meters from the ground is too close to the ground. The parachute simply couldn’t fully deploy, and the traditional protection scheme was almost ineffective in this range. Liu Bin, the founder of Yifeng Intelligent, installed his team’s safety airbag protection product and confidently sat inside the aircraft.
Upon receiving the command, the aircraft plummeted instantly. Within 0.2 seconds, the system completed fault identification and attitude determination; within 0.3 seconds, the airbag fully deployed. At the moment the aircraft touched the ground, the three sets of airbags precisely absorbed the impact force, and Liu Bin landed safely.
Subsequently, Chen Yuan, the co-founder of Yingwu Intelligent who was also present at the scene, also got in the aircraft to test it himself. These two young entrepreneurs, through two real environment tests, took a crucial step in the industry towards using airbag protection for manned-level aircraft.
The accumulation of three core technologies
This safety airbag system that has impressed the industry is not the result of a sudden inspiration, but rather the result of long-term technological accumulation by Yufeng Intelligent. Liu Bin attributes it to three aspects.
The first is the ultra-low-altitude parachute deployment technology. Parachutes are one of the best measures for protection at high altitudes, but in actual use, the higher the altitude, the more effective the parachute becomes, and the lower the altitude, the harder it is to function. Currently, similar products on the market generally require a deployment height of 60 meters or higher, while Yufeng Intelligent has achieved 15 meters.
The second is the attitude recognition technology. When an aircraft falls, it may fall vertically, or it may roll over or overturn. Different attitudes have very different requirements for protection. The team of Liu Bin can capture real-time data such as speed, acceleration, and angle through sensors, and within a very short time determine the state of the aircraft and decide which protection scheme to activate.
The third is the airbag buffering technology. eVTOL is itself a super-light aircraft. If the airbag is too heavy, the aircraft cannot carry it; but if the airbag is too light, it cannot withstand the instantaneous pressure impact. After years of comparison, Liu Bin designed a multi-layer gradient pressure release structure, making the airbag lightweight yet effective. It can not only be quickly deployed within 0.3 seconds, but also ensure sufficient buffering force when landing.
“Many people’s initial reaction was, isn’t this just a larger version of the car airbag? But actually, it’s completely different,” Liu Bin said. “The materials, the structure, the volume of gas, and the deployment logic all need to be redone from scratch.”
Apart from the low-altitude area, based on this set of identical perception algorithms and airbag triggering technology, Yufeng Intelligent has also developed a “ground-landing” product – an elderly fall-prevention vest. The vest is equipped with sensors that capture the body’s posture changes thousands of times per second. Once it detects a fall, an airbag pops out immediately to protect the head and hip joints. It is reported that this is the only fall-prevention vest on the market that can provide 360-degree all-round protection. It sold over several hundred sets as soon as it was launched last year.
Although the team currently consists of only ten people, Liu Bin has always insisted on maintaining a personnel structure with a high proportion of R&D personnel. His thinking is very clear: solving cutting-edge technical problems does not lie in having a large number of people, but in having the right people in the key positions.
As the low-altitude economy continues to heat up, the safety protection of aircraft is evolving from a “plus factor” to a “must-have item”. We look forward to the future, on this innovative soil of Nanjing, that Yufeng Intelligent will continue to use its solid technological accumulation to ensure the safety bottom line for more low-altitude flights.
