Abstract:Novel electric aircraft designs coupled with intense efforts from academia, government and industry led to a paradigm shift in urban transportation by introducing UAM. While UAM promises to introduce a new mode of transport, it depends on ground infrastructure to operate safely and efficiently in a highly constrained urban environment. Due to its novelty, the research of UAM ground infrastructure is widely scattered. Therefore, this paper selects, categorizes and summarizes existing literature in a systematic … Show more
“…Since the vertiport describes a significant bottleneck especially for near-term UAM applications, a vertiport's performance, operational capability and resilience are of great interest. In HorizonUAM, the vertiport is being examined in terms of regulatory and operational state of the art [60], exemplary layout designs and corresponding concept of operations for both low-and high-density throughput scenarios [61], performance-based rating of a vertiport's airside operation [62] and a vertiport's placement inside airport environment [57]. Furthermore, a vertiport network in an urban environment was developed and compared to ground-based traffic networks [37] and the development and validation of real vertiport prototypes and their operation inside a scaled urban environment suitable for flight testing [63] is envisaged.…”
Section: Building a "U-space Regulatory Sandbox"mentioning
Urban air mobility is a rapidly growing field of research. While drones or unmanned aerial vehicles have been operated mainly in the private and military sector in the past, an increasing range of opportunities is opening up for commercial applications. A new multitude of passenger-carrying drone or air taxi concepts promises to fulfill the dream of flying above congested urban areas. While early research has been focusing on vehicle development, solutions for urban air traffic management are lagging behind. This paper collects and reviews the main findings of past urban-air-mobility-related research projects at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to serve as a basis for ongoing research from an air traffic management perspective.
“…Since the vertiport describes a significant bottleneck especially for near-term UAM applications, a vertiport's performance, operational capability and resilience are of great interest. In HorizonUAM, the vertiport is being examined in terms of regulatory and operational state of the art [60], exemplary layout designs and corresponding concept of operations for both low-and high-density throughput scenarios [61], performance-based rating of a vertiport's airside operation [62] and a vertiport's placement inside airport environment [57]. Furthermore, a vertiport network in an urban environment was developed and compared to ground-based traffic networks [37] and the development and validation of real vertiport prototypes and their operation inside a scaled urban environment suitable for flight testing [63] is envisaged.…”
Section: Building a "U-space Regulatory Sandbox"mentioning
Urban air mobility is a rapidly growing field of research. While drones or unmanned aerial vehicles have been operated mainly in the private and military sector in the past, an increasing range of opportunities is opening up for commercial applications. A new multitude of passenger-carrying drone or air taxi concepts promises to fulfill the dream of flying above congested urban areas. While early research has been focusing on vehicle development, solutions for urban air traffic management are lagging behind. This paper collects and reviews the main findings of past urban-air-mobility-related research projects at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to serve as a basis for ongoing research from an air traffic management perspective.
“…In a literature review of urban air mobility (UAM) developments, Garrow et al (2021) identified a need for route optimization algorithms [18]. Another literature review by Schweiger and Preis (2022) affirmed that airspace management and traffic separation principles were critical considerations for UAM development [19]. The study suggested that AAM routes follow arterial highway systems into and out of major cities.…”
The successful deployment of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) requires the safe integration of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in non-segregated airspace. However, a lack of practical deployment demonstrations can slow the regulatory progress. This study presents a practical deployment framework for the integration of eVTOL aircraft into public airspace, in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) special airworthiness criteria. This study focused on a corporate use case to provide a comprehensive scenario for enhancing intra-company mobility. The scenario supports early implementation and demonstration goals by removing reliance on air traffic management systems or air traffic controller separation services. The practical deployment framework included facility selection, route planning, terrain mapping, collision avoidance, aircraft selection, infrastructure requirements, vertiport placement, electric chargers, ground handling, operational staff, and cost estimates. Planners can use the framework as a template to inform the implementation of real-world AAM services using eVTOL aircraft.
“…however, there is a lack of access from an ATC perspective, such as approach control, which occurs around the vertiport. In July 2022, an interesting review paper [34] was published covering discussions between various industries and academia regarding the design and operation of vertiports. In the study, it was mentioned that the initial uncertainty about the name of UAM ground infrastructure was overcome, but studies related to vertiports still tend to describe a vision more than providing a realistic and implementable proposal.…”
Section: Related Work and Previous Researchmentioning
Recently, urban air mobility (UAM), a new transportation system that can expand urban mobility from 2D to 3D, has been in the spotlight all over the world. For successful implementation of UAM, not only eVTOL aircraft development but also various systems such as UAM traffic management are required; however, research on these areas is still insufficient. Based on the BQA model, in this study, we introduce the balanced branch queuing approach (BBQA) model as a new approach control model that can improve operational efficiency by enabling the landing order to be changed more easily. Through simulation, its effectiveness was verified. The proposed BBQA achieved the identical airspace safety as the BQA model, in addition to showing a superior result to the SBA model in on-time performance (OTP). The vertiport airspace blueprint concept and approach control model proposed in this study are expected to play an important role in future studies in the area of air traffic management in UAM.
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