Company

The Walter Mobility Group Vision

The Walter Mobility Group will apply HybriCraft™ technology to overcome the remaining constraints hindering human mobility over Earth’s surface by providing terrain-independent surface transportation solutions.

Mission Statement

The Walter Mobility Group will develop HybriCraft technology innovations serving global transportation markets by providing designs enabling previously unattainable transportation service. To accomplish this mission, The Walter Mobility Group will deliver safe designs that meet defined performance requirements, assist customers with target-vehicle procurement and construction, and provide customer support for vehicle operation.

Management Team

The Walter Mobility Group, Inc. constitutes a management and leadership team, assembled to bring the Walter technology to market. The company's management team includes:

• Experienced flight personnel and qualified design engineering talent familiar with appropriate related technologies;
• Experienced business management personnel, including qualified financial management, and appropriate corporate and patent counsel; and
• Team leaders, responsible for cooperating with established power system manufacturers, who will work closely with customers to address and accomplish their operational goals.
• Management team biographies >

History

Historically, common surface vehicles and transportation methods have adapted to – rather than overcome – restrictions inherent to paths, roads, and highways. These thoroughfares, and the vehicles we employ to navigate them, constitute a system that is dependent upon conditioned terrain and favorable environmental conditions. In particular, as noted earlier, transiting dissimilar surface features (such as water-to-shore and snow-to-ground) presents conventional mobility with insurmountable obstacles. Additionally, we cannot transit safely, reliably, swiftly, and easily across disaster areas inundated by water or other saturated terrain like mud, marshes, and swamps in the same vehicle we employ for crossing broken or rocky terrain – or everyday transit.

Between 1950 and 1965, innovators earned broad media popularity as they worked worldwide to resolve transportation boundaries. By the mid 1960’s, the state of the art Air Cushion Craft (ACC) gained focused attention. Instability proved inherent however, and innovators’ basic concepts ultimately fell short of satisfying the mobility need they originally set out to address.

Some variations involved an outer skirt, added to contain the supporting air cushion. This modification added some stability, enhancing capability of larger operating platforms, especially over water. However, uneven surfaces proved that the skirt limited, rather than helped, these vehicles overcome the broader mobility challenge. Skirted ACCs, or hovercraft, suffer from navigability barriers over most uneven terrain, including foliated areas and impediments similar to canals, fences, and walls – however low.

Available hovercraft-class vehicles experience some difficulty overcoming slopes as minimal as a paved road’s crown of several inches. Even conventional aircraft demonstrate limited operational efficiency and user practicality. With the possible exception of certain registered ultra-light aircraft, aerial vehicles suffer tremendous efficiency penalties associated with takeoff, climbing to operating altitude, and landing evolutions. In addition to requiring expensive, specialized support facilities, such as airports, formal licensing and permitting requirements restrict their operation by the un-indoctrinated public. As is common with specialized craft, size also is cost-prohibitive to effective and efficient operation.

From 1960 to 1970, William Walter independently studied the technology of riding on air. In 1970, Mr. Walter developed a new concept of dual, independent, concentric air cushions, capable of lifting a vehicle to one-half its diameter above the surface – and higher with significant technological development – thereby clearing obstacles while retaining a substantial payload capacity. In 1973, Mr. Walter filed for and obtained his first US Patent.

From 1970 to 1988, Mr. Walter continued to develop, test, and validate alternatives and design improvements to his technology. He worked independently in a proprietorship, doing business as Frontier Systems, in Placerville, CA. Without outside funding, Mr. Walter improved upon his patented concept, advanced his original patent claims to practice, documented progress with his concepts, and conducted innumerable, documented laboratory tests with several flight models. He continually researched the potential markets for his technology and sought the sizeable investment required to bring his technology to market.

In 1988, two independent investors, one from the information technologies industry, and one from the movie industry, agreed to join Mr. Walter and create a new California corporation, known as Hybricraft, Inc. Continuing his research and development, Mr. Walter produced concepts, applying for two new patents in 1994 and 1998. The U.S. Patent Office issued the patents in 1998 and 2000. Hybricraft built and tested a full-scale proof of concept vehicle, successfully producing a test unit, which provided technological validation of several key components.

Carried by that momentum, inspired by the unyielding market need, and driven as inventors are, he continued advancing his effort, forming The Walter Mobility Group in the spring of 2005. William Walter established this corporation to bring his enabling technology to market.