Mobility and Transport: Advanced Air Mobility
Today, 13% of global urban residents live in 33 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants. In 2030, 43 megacities are expected to exist mostly in developing regions and by 2050, 68% of the world’s population will be urban . Urban growth has to be managed sustainably and infrastructure access needs to be ensured to the urban rich and poor. Electrified air taxis promise a relief for crowded streets, accelerated travel times within metropole areas, no carbon emissions if the electricity is generated from renewable sources, and reduced operating cost compared with conventional internal combustion vehicles. Recent advances in autonomous technology promise further emission reductions through advanced route planning and responsiveness to contingencies. Some imagine that novel business concepts like ride sharing would make an air taxi ride affordable for everyone. Early-stage efforts to technically develop smaller sized, shorter range electric aircraft are encouraging. However, besides statements of innovative companies, that are often difficult to reproduce, research data in these areas is still sparse.
To address this shortcoming, the group of Sustainable Future Mobility studies the outlined research questions and others, to investigate Advanced Air Mobility in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and existing practices of technical certification standards that have to be extended for air taxis and other emerging aircrafts.
Ongoing Research: HOlistic Air Mobility Automation Test area & demonstrator (HOAMAT)
| Funding | Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wirtschaft, Landesentwicklung und Energie (StMWi) |
| Cooperation | Skyroads AG |
The HOAMAT project investigates the automated guidance of emerging and smaller conventional aircrafts in a defined airspace. A novel system is to be developed which plans and coordinates the flight trajectories of various air traffic participants. The goal of the research project is to verify the overall system capability, and safety as well as passenger and environmentally friendly aviation. The Professorship of Sustainable Future Mobility (SFM) is investigating the environmental aspects.
Specifically, SFM is going to provide a basis for assessing the impact of flight missions on the inhabitant of urban areas. To this end, various environmental impacts, including acoustic and visual factors, will be experimentally observed using several different air vehicles (unmanned/manned, semi/fully autonomous, and remotely piloted). The collected data will be shared with the cooperating partners to reduce potentially disruptive or harmful environmental impacts in the trajectory optimization of flight.
Furthermore, semi-empirical models will be generated to predict the environmental impacts of air vehicles The results will be validated with measurement data. For the measurement campaign, a flight laboratory at an airfield related to the Munich metropolitan area will be established. The concept includes the development and commissioning of several modular measurement stations as well as a communication protocol for wireless transmission of data.
References
- European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). "A Study on the societal acceptance of Urban Air Mobility in Europe". 2021.'
- Garrow, German, Leonard. "Urban air mobility: A Comprehensive Review and Comparative Analysis with Autonomous and Electric Ground Transportation for Informing Future Research". Georgia Institute of Technology. 2021.
- Afonso, Ferreira, Ribeiro, Lau, Suleman. "On the design of environmentally sustainable aircraft for urban air mobility". Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. 2021.
- Terekhov. "Assessing noise effects of the urban air transportation system". 2018 AIAA/CEAS Aeroacoustics Conference. 2018.
- Torija, Li, Self. "Effects of a hovering unmanned aerial vehicle on urban soundscapes perception". Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. 2020.
- Schmähl, Speck, Hornung. "Lärmmodellierung eines CargoeVTOLUAVs mittels Systemidentifikation aus Fluglärmmessdaten in Horizontal und Schwebeflug zum Zweck der Integration in ein Geoinformationssystem." Deutscher Luft und Raumfahrtkongress 2020. 2020.
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Bent, Boeing, Snider, Bell Flight. "Urban Air Mobility Noise: Current Practice, Gaps, and Recommendations". Urban Air Mobility Noise Working Group (UNWG). 2020.