Urban air mobility

Urban air mobility refers to urban transportation systems that move people by air. These transportation systems developed in response to traffic congestion.[1]

History

Air mobility is progressing along both manned and unmanned directions. In Hamburg, the WiNDroVe project – (use of drones in a metropolitan area) was implemented from May 2017 through January 2018.[2] In Ingolstadt the Urban Air Mobility project began in June 2018, involving Audi, Airbus, the Carisma Research Center, the Fraunhofer Application Center for Mobility, the THI University of Applied Sciences (THI in the artificial intelligence research network) and other partners. The use of UAM in emergency services, transport of blood and organs, traffic monitoring, public safety and passenger transport.

The German, Dutch and Belgian cities Maastricht, Aachen, Hasselt, Heerlen and Liège joined the UAM Initiative of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC).[3] Toulouse, France, is participating in the European Urban Air Mobility Initiative. The project is coordinated by Airbus, the European institutional partner Eurocontrol and EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency).

Implementation

The concept is already realized in São Paulo, Brazil. There, urban air mobility is provided by helicopters. more than in New York City and Tokyo together. Helicopter air taxis are already available in Mexico City, Mexico.[4] Fast air connections are still associated with high costs, and cause considerable noise and high energy consumption.[5]

Aircraft characteristics

Personal air vehicles are under development for urban air mobility. These include projects such as the CityAirbus, the Lilium Jet or the Volocopter, the EHang 216 and the Boeing PAV.[6][7]

In the concept phase, urban air mobility aircraft, having VTOL capabilities, are deployed to take off and land vertically in a relatively small area to avoid the need of a runway.[8] The majority of designs are electric and use multiple rotors to minimize noise (due to rotational speed) while providing high system redundancy. Many of them have completed their first flight.

The most common configurations of urban air mobility aircraft are multicopters (such as the Volocopter) or so-called tiltwing convertiplane aircraft (e.g. A³ Vahana). The first type uses only rotors with vertical axis, while the second additionally have propulsion and lift systems for horizontal flight (e.g. pressure propeller and wing).[9]

gollark: I mean, probably grade B at best.
gollark: GPT-3's really neat.
gollark: Besides, neural network approaches are way higher quality these days.
gollark: Why would I train the markov chain on *you*?
gollark: Except me.

References
  1. "Urban Air Mobility (UAM)". eu-smartcities.eu. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  2. "Commercial use of drones: WiNDroVe project launched". zal.aero. Jul 11, 2017. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  3. "Urban Air Mobility Initiative". icas.org. Sep 24, 2018. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  4. "Voom". airbus.com. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  5. Andreas Thellmann (Mar 20, 2018). "The Future of Urban Air Mobility - TEDxWHU". youtube.com. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  6. "Urban Air Mobility – the sky is yours". icas.org. Nov 27, 2018. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  7. "The Complete Market Overview of the eVTOL Industry". transportup.com. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
  8. Michael Shamiyeh, Raoul Rothfeld, Mirko Hornung (Sep 14, 2018). "A Performance Benchmark of Recent Personal Air Vehicle Concepts for Urban Air Mobility" (PDF). icas.org. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. Jeff Holden, Nikhil Goel (Oct 27, 2016). "Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation" (PDF). transportup.com. Retrieved Aug 20, 2019.
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