Innovative Air Mobility

Virtual air taxi flight over Hamburg
In the UAM cabin simulator, test participants were able to experience a virtual air taxi flight over Hamburg and provide feedback.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as part of Innovative Air Mobility (IAM) is a new air transportation system for passengers and cargo in urban environments. It is enabled by new technologies in the fields of aircraft technology, electric propulsion and air traffic management. A core idea is to integrate UAM into existing multimodal transport systems. The vision of UAM is to achieve safe, secure and sustainable air transport in urban and suburban environments, complementing existing transportation systems and contributing to the decarbonization of the transport sector.

UAM is expected to benefit users and to also have a positive impact on the economy by creating new markets, employment opportunities for manufacturing and operation of UAM vehicles, and the construction of related ground infrastructure. However, there are also concerns about noise, safety and security, privacy and environmental impacts. Therefore, the UAM system needs to be designed carefully to become safe, affordable, accessible, environmentally friendly, economically viable and thus sustainable.

The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft­ und Raumfahrt, DLR) combined its competencies in the areas of UAM vehicles, related infrastructure, operation of UAM services, and public acceptance of future urban air transport into a single project: “HorizonUAM – Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)”. DLR as the Federal Republic of Germany’s research center for aeronautics and space has the unique ability to investigate UAM holistically, from idea and conception right through to simulation and flight testing. The HorizonUAM project ran from July 2020 to August 2023, with a financial investment of 9.1 Million Euro. Ten DLR institutes across Germany worked together along with cooperation partners NASA and Bauhaus Luftfahrt.

Loading

Air Taxi Passenger Simulation

Social Acceptance

A virtual reality study on the well­being of passengers in an autonomous air taxi was conducted. 30 participants experienced an airport shuttle flight in the city of Hamburg in a mixed­reality air taxi simulator. The influences of a flight attendant on board and a re­routing of the flight on perceived well­being were assessed. The results show that the presence of a flight attendant had no statistically significant influence on the well­being of participants. 16 out of 30 participants stated that an attendant on board is not necessary. Nevertheless, eight found it reasonable for the introduction phase and nine remarked an increase in perceived safety due to the flight attendant. Furthermore, the results show that with an attendant on board, the re­routing scenario was rated better compared to the scenario without an additional crew member on board. With respect to information needs, the three most relevant pieces of information were travel time, changes of flight route due to obstacles or other traffic, and flight route.

Cabin Simulator Fact Sheet

  • Cabin size: 340 cm long, 175 cm wide, 165 cm high
  • Mixed Reality: Headset Varjo XR-3
  • Dataset: City of Hamburg based on OpenStreetMap, orthophotos provided by City of Hamburg
  • Flight Dynamics: X-Plane 12's Beta eVTOL

References

Papenfuss, M. Stolz, N. Riedesel, F. Dunkel, J.M. Ernst, T. Laudien, H. Lenz, A. Korkmaz, A. End, B.I. Schuchardt; Experiencing Urban Air Mobility: How Passengers Evaluate a Simulated Flight with an Air Taxi; preprint; https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.01079

T. Laudien, J.M. Ernst, B.I. Schuchardt, Implementing a Customizable Air Taxi Simulator with a Video-See-Through Head-Mounted Display – A Comparison of Different Mixed Reality Approaches, DASC 2022, 18.-22.09.2022, Portsmouth, VA, USA, 10.1109/DASC55683.2022.9925870

Outlook

DLR’s research on urban and innovative air mobility is continuing. Ongoing projects cover the implementation of vertiport research infrastructure, inter-modality solutions and airspace integration of autonomous air taxis. Join us for DLR’s 4th Urban Air Mobility Symposium, taking place 9 October 2024 at DLR Braunschweig.

Urban Air Mobility Symposium

International Forum for Aviation Research

At the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) first Advanced Air Mobility Symposium (AAM 2024) the DLR (Institute of Flight Guidance) presents its research activities in the field of air mobility together with NRC (National Research Council of Canada) and the association IFAR (International Forum for Aviation Research). Both DLR and NRC are members of IFAR, the global association of aviation research organizations. IFAR currently has 26 active aeronautics research organizations spread across all inhabited continents. In total, more than 40,000 researchers work in the IFAR member organizations.

For more information, visit the IFAR website or download the IFAR Scientific Assessment for Urban Air Mobility.

Contact

Dr.rer.nat. Dagi Geister

Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Institute of Flight Guidance
Head of Department: Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Lilienthalplatz 7, 38108 Braunschweig