Research
What Can UAM Operators Do to Ensure They Gain Passengers’ Acceptance of Air Taxis?
Communicate, communicate, communicate
A study conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) reveals what is and isn’t important to gain passengers’ acceptance of urban air mobility (UAM) air taxi services. While the flights were simulated, the sentiments expressed were real. The researchers set up a mixed reality (MR) Air Taxi Simulator merging a real-world environment with a computer-generated…
Take Charge! Putting the e in eVTOL
A team of British researchers devise a new method to assess battery power capabilities
In their research paper, “Novel battery power capability assessment for improved eVTOL aircraft landing,” researchers Ollie Hatherall, Anup Barai, Mona Faraji Niri, and James Marco from the Energy Innovation Centre, WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom and Zeyuan Wang from Vertical Aerospace Group Ltd in Bristol, United Kingdom sought to find innovative ways to…
Doing the Math: Optimizing Routing and Scheduling for UAM Fleet Management Using Quantum Annealing
A quantum leap for UAM routing and scheduling.
Writing in Scientific Reports, seven researchers from Japan’s Tohuku University and Sumitomo Corporation proposed a plan to optimize how urban air mobility (UAM) operators, infrastructure managers, and others in the UAM ecosystem manage routing and scheduling using quantum annealing. Quantum annealing, a quantum computing process, uses quantum fluctuations to find the best solution to an optimization…
How High Can AAM Go with AI?
EASA’s EUROCONTROL shows us 6 ways Human-AI teaming could take flight.
The potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to board tomorrow’s aircraft, partner with humans, and propel the aviation industry to new heights is a tantalizing proposition. Aviation + AI has the potential to reduce costly delays and shrink the industry’s carbon footprint while enhancing safety in the cockpit, facilitating single pilot operations, and managing what promises…
Using Redundancy and Risk Awareness to Improve UAM Network Design
In their study, “Risk-aware urban air mobility network design with overflow redundancy,” University of Texas at Austion professors John-Paul Clarke and Ufuk Topcu, along with their postdoctoral fellows, Qinshuang Wei, and Zhenyu Gao, have devised a plan for urban air mobility (UAM) network design that factors in reserve capacity that takes into account alternative landing…
Using AI-driven Drones to Put Out a World on Fire
Once a fire is detected at a specific location, an autonomous drone with a visual camera flies toward the identified geolocation of the node to monitor the fire’s progress. The drone runs our novel fire center detection and tracking algorithm for precise localization and then uses an appropriate countermeasure to extinguish the fire.