Urban Air Mobility (UAM) promises to be the next mobility revolution, enabling faster, more efficient and sustainable transport solutions (such as flying taxis and other large drones) throughout urban areas. But there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome for UAM to become a reality. These include the organisation of the lower-level airspace, the scale-up of operations in a safe way, integration with ATM, the development of an architecture that can support operations and public acceptance.
The challenge
AMU-LED is looking into the capabilities of U-space to enable UAM by answering questions related to the maturity of concepts and technology, the challenges, and what needs to be done to implement this new form of mobility in cities. AMU-LED will let UAM stakeholders specify various use cases applicable to logistics and the urban transport of passengers, to integrate the UAM environment, to demonstrate the UAS ground and airborne platforms and finally, to assess safety, security, sustainability and public acceptance.
The solution
AMU-LED will perform real-life UAM demonstrations and flights using U-space and deploying several types of drones to showcase different scenarios, use cases and applications (e.g. air taxis, emergency services, delivery of goods, surveys etc.) to demonstrate and investigate the research questions. To this end, several major flight demonstrations will take place in the second half of 2022 in the UK, Spain and The Netherlands
What did we do?
The project is carried out in a consortium with companies in The Netherlands, Spain and the U.K. Together, an extensive state-of-the-art research has been set up where all relevant aspects were considered. Use cases include taxi flights from the city to an airport and last-mile drone delivery. Special attention is given to emergency flights for police, ambulance and fire fighters.
Within the city of Amsterdam, NLR will investigate the link with air traffic control of Schiphol and the link with other air traffic on arrival routes to the airport. and demonstrate that U-space, the traffic control services for drones, can help to fly in situations where the pilot does not see the drone anymore. Also public acceptance of drones will be investigated
Project partners:
Industry (NL): NTT Data (overkoepelende projectleiding), Boeing, Jeppesen, CATEC, Airbus, EHang, AirHub, Space53, Altitude Angel
Onderzoeksorganisaties: Koninklijk NLR (projectleider demonstraties), ITG, Enaire, Tecnalia, Ineco, ANRA, Cranfield University
Dit project wordt gefinancierd door de SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU) onder subsidieovereenkomst nr. 101017702.
