News release overview
Hitachi develops airframe modeling technology to boost advanced air mobility safety
Modeling drone behavior in the strong winds and sudden gusts of urban environments, contributing to safer infrastructure building
Figure 1: Airframe modeling technology
Tokyo, September 4, 2025 - Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501, "Hitachi"), has developed modeling technology*1 to replicate airframe behavior in response to sudden weather changes, including strong winds and sudden gusts, in anticipation of increasing employment of drones and other advanced air mobility equipment. Conventionally, the use of air mobility has been restricted because weather conditions constantly change, impacted by strong winds and gusts, making it a challenge to expand their use in logistics and surveys of important infrastructure. Hitachi’s new technology measures aircraft wind resistance and models airframe response*2, accurately confirming in digital space how the position of an airframe will drift and thereby calculating flight risks. Moreover, by incorporating this technology into the mobility control infrastructure*3 that Hitachi has developed, it will be possible to ensure safer flight control through accurate prediction of wind conditions and flight characteristics as well as efficient aircraft operations by proposing detours around risky routes. This should enable the use of air mobility equipment in areas where it was previously difficult, including in cities with clusters of tall buildings and in mountainous areas. In this way, Hitachi will contribute to the development of new air mobility infrastructure that will help achieve sustainable, safe, and secure regional societies through more efficient maintenance and management of infrastructure and swifter recovery operations after disasters.
*1 Modeling technology: Technology designed to model airframe response (see definition below) and use computers to replicate and check airframe behavior in specific flight environments.
*2 Airframe response: An aeronautical engineering term denoting the movement of drones and other aircraft in response to external forces such as wind, dynamic lift, and gravity.
*3 Hitachi develops mobility control infrastructure to support daily living and recovery in disaster-stricken areas : March 18, 2024
