Urban air mobility

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).

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]