Urban Air Mobility - UAM Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) means a safe and efficient system for vehicles, piloted or not, to move passengers and cargo within a city.
Some of the barriers to urban air mobility operations include safety certification of autonomous vehicle systems, community noise impacts from vehicle operations, cyber security protections, safe airspace integration with traditional airline operations, and many others.
One of the most important certification concerns is to ensure the vehicles are safe to fly and to land, especially in emergency situations in crowded urban areas.
An example of an operational challenge is ensuring that vehicles, piloted or not, are integrated into an air traffic system in which parts of that system must be fully automated to handle the high frequency and density of projected operations.
Community acceptance of UAM operations is another challenge. While demonstrating safe and reliable operations is critically important, it is equally important that vehicle operations don’t create unacceptable community noise impacts, and that they fit into the urban land and skyscape.
April 2021 - Volocopter - The Roadmap to scalable UAM
May 2022 - Building vertiports without final regulations in place
March 2022: EASA Publishes Design Specifications for Vertiports
March 2022: US Senate supports advanced air mobility legislation. This is the bill S.516 - Advanced Air Mobility Coordination and Leadership Act. Both the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) applauded the bill, with Pete Bunce, president and CEO of GAMA, stating that coordination at the government level will be needed to usher in this growing aviation sector.
FAA - Future of the Ocean
March 2017 - On-Demand Mobility (ODM)
Oct 2016 - On-Demand Aviation (ODA)
Aug 2019 - HAILING AN UBER AIR
UBER ELEVATE - Dec 2020 - bought by Joby
CTOL: Conventional Takeoff and Landing
Thin Haul: 9-10 pax aircraft
VTOL: vertical takeoff and landing
vertiport: VTOL hubs with multiple takeoff and landing pads, as well as charging infrastructure
vertistop: a single VTOL pad with minimal infrastructure
Battery terminology
- specific energy: the amount of energy per unit weight provided by the battery, which ultimately determines the gross weight of the vehicle
- charge rate: how quickly the battery can be brought back to a nearly full charge, which determines operational idle time
- cycle life: the number of charge/discharge cycles the cell can sustain before its capacity is less than 80% of the original, which determines how often the battery must be replaced
- cost per kilowatt-hour: which determines the overall battery cost
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TransportUp - The latest news in Aerial Mobility
Nov 2017 - Uber’s ‘flying cars’ could arrive in LA by 2020 — and here’s what it’ll be like to ride one
Jan 2018 - Fantastical flying machines at CES 2018 highlight the future of urban transport
March 2018 - Cora, Kitty Hawk’s Air Taxi Takes Off in New Zealand
Ehang’s passenger-carrying drones look insanely impressive in first test flights
CEO takes ride in passenger drone to demonstrate that it’s safe
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