HorizonUAM Project Overview

Efficiency, safety, feasibility, sustainability and affordability are the key characteristics of future urban mobility. The project “HorizonUAM – Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)” provides first answers to this vision by pooling existing competencies of individual institutes within DLR. HorizonUAM combines the research about UAM vehicles, infrastructure, services, as well as the public acceptance. Competencies and current research topics including propulsion technologies, flight system technologies, communication and navigation go along in conjunction with the findings of modern flight guidance and airport technology techniques. HorizonUAM analyzes possible UAM market scenarios up to the year 2050 and assesses economic aspects such as the degree of vehicle utilization or cost-benefit potential via an overall system model. Furthermore, the system design for future air taxis is carried out on the basis of vehicle family concepts, onboard systems, aspects of safety and security as well as the certification of autonomy functions. The analysis of flight guidance concepts and the sequencing of air taxis at vertiports are other central parts of the project, as is the investigation of acceptance issues both with respect to the public in general and regarding potential passengers and passers-by in particular. Throughout HorizonUAM’s runtime the team will demonstrate concepts for flight guidance, communication and navigation technology in simulations as well as in an extensive flight campaign, where drones will operate in a scaled urban scenario. The HorizonUAM project was started in mid-2020 and runs until mid-2023

More than an Air Taxi - Intermediate Results of DLR’s HorizonUAM Project

The project “HorizonUAM – Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)” pools existing competencies of ten institutes within DLR. The project combines the research about urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles or air taxis, the corresponding infrastructure, the operation of UAM services, as well as the public acceptance of future urban air transportation. The analysis of flight guidance concepts and the sequencing of air taxis at vertidromes is a central part of the project. Selected concepts for flight guidance, communication and navigation technology are demonstrated with drones in a scaled urban scenario. The HorizonUAM project has started in 2020 and will run until mid-2023. Among the highlights of the first half of the research project are first vehicle fleet pre-designs including cabin interior design and the installation of a mixed reality UAM cabin simulator. A rating method for the design of starting and landing areas, so called vertidromes, has been established and a first capacity analysis was conducted for vertidrome integration at the airport of Hamburg, Germany. Furthermore, a virtual reality study on the acceptance of drones and air taxis flying over pedestrians in an urban setting has been completed with 47 subjects. An online survey among UAM stakeholders from unmanned aviation associations, research and industry confirmed the assumptions on the use cases defined within HorizonUAM: airport shuttle, suburban commuter, intra-city, inter-city and mega-city. This talk gives an overview of the research topics covered in the HorizonUAM project, as well as a report on the intermediate results and the work in progress

Public acceptance and noise considerations in urban air mobility research - Intermediate results of DLR's HorizonUAM project

The project "HorizonUAM - Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)" pools existing competencies of eleven institutes within DLR. The project combines the research about urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles or air taxis, the corresponding infrastructure, the operation of UAM services, as well as the public acceptance of future urban air transportation. The analysis of flight guidance concepts and the sequencing of air taxis at vertidromes is a central part of the project. Selected concepts for flight guidance, communication and navigation technology are demonstrated with drones in a scaled urban scenario. The HorizonUAM project has started in 2020 and will run until mid-2023. Among the highlights of the first half of the research project are first vehicle fleet pre-designs including cabin interior design and the installation of a mixed reality UAM cabin simulator. A rating method for the design of starting and landing areas, so called vertidromes, has been established and a first capacity analysis was conducted for vertidrome integration at the airport of Hamburg, Germany. Furthermore, a virtual reality study on the acceptance of drones and air taxis flying over pedestrians in an urban setting has been completed with 47 subjects. An online survey among UAM stakeholders from unmanned aviation associations, research and industry confirmed the assumptions on the use cases defined within HorizonUAM: airport shuttle, suburban commuter, intra-city, inter-city and mega-city. This keynote gives an overview of the research covered in the HorizonUAM project with special focus on the topics of public acceptance and noise

Entwicklung eines konfigurierbaren Flugtaxi-Simulators mit Hilfe einer kopfgetragenen Anzeige mit Video-Durchsicht - Ein Vergleich verschiedener Mixed-Reality-Ansätze

Um zukünftige Flugtaxi-Konzepte frühzeitig aus Passagiersicht bewerten zu können, wird ein immersiver und gleichzeitig konfigurierbarer Kabinensimulator benötigt. Dieser Vortrag zeigt wie moderne Mixed-Reality-Technologien bei der Umsetzung eines solchen Simulators helfen können. So kann zum Beispiel mit Hilfe einer Video-Durchsicht-Brille das reale Kabinenmockup flexibel um virtuelle Objekte erweitert werden. Die durchgeführte Probandenstudie zeigt die Vorteile und Grenzen solcher Ansätze

Assessment of Air Taxi Passenger Acceptance – Implementation and Initial Evaluation of a Mixed Reality Simulator

Urban air mobility paves new ways for public transport modalities like air taxis. To shape the operational concepts and the design of these air taxis, the acceptance and requirements of future passengers should be considered even in early stages of the development process. Within the HorizonUAM project, it is of interest to understand the effects of social presence, e.g. through on-board service personnel, on perceived comfort. These results help to develop concepts, how fully or mainly autonomous operations can be achieved that are accepted by users. As part of HorizonUAM, an air taxi simulator was implemented to assess the aforementioned passenger acceptance with regard to defined key criteria like presence of on-board personnel or amount of presented information. To create an experience that is as close to a real air taxi flight as possible, recent advancements in head-mounted display technology facilitated the creation of a mixed reality simulation. Mixed reality combines advantages of full-flight simulators like human collaboration and use of analog instruments with those of virtual reality simulators that are cost-effective, highly immersive devices for rapid prototyping. This paper reports on the work conducted to define and design such a mixed reality simulation to investigate factors of passenger acceptance. First, functional requirements that were defined for a first study of passenger interaction and comfort are presented, as well as the technical requirements that were derived. Additionally, mixed reality technology should be used for the novel simulator to enable high flexibility. Second, as numerable different setups of mixed reality were possible with state-of-the-art technology, four different setups were compared in a pre-study against each other. The empirical results with regards to experienced immersion are presented. Finally, the conclusion from this study regarding the final setup for the mixed reality simulation are presented

Experiencing Urban Air Mobility: How Passengers evaluate a simulated flight with an Air Taxi

For the successful development and implementation of novel concepts and technology, the acceptance of potential users is crucial. Therefore, within the project HorizonUAM, we investigated passengers' acceptance of air taxis. One challenge is that not many people have real experiences with urban air mobility (UAM) at the moment and thus requirements formulated by potential users refer to rather abstract concepts. To allow participants to gain realistic impressions of UAM concepts, a Mixed Reality Air Taxi Simulator was set up. It allows participants to experience an inner-city business shuttle flight. A study with 30 participants assessed the information needs and the influence of another person on board on wellbeing in nominal situations (experiment 1) as well as one non-nominal situation (experiment 2). For the latter, participants experienced a re-routing of the flight due to an unavailability of landing sites at the vertidrome. During and after the flights, participants answered questionnaires and extensive interviews were conducted. The study produced first empirical data on relevant factors regarding interaction, information needs and comfort within an air taxi. The findings show that passengers want to be informed about intentions of the vehicle. The presence of a steward on board is not necessary but can increase wellbeing especially during non-nominal situations.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 8 table

DLR Blueprint – Initial ConOps of U-Space Flight Rules (UFR)

This Blueprint proposes an initial Concept of Operations (ConOps) of new flight rules for crewed and uncrewed airspace users in U-space airspaces, called U-space Flight Rules (UFR). Based on current European U-space architectures, UFR are intended to enable high-density Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) operations while harmonising with today’s flight rules and Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. This ConOps suggests that all airspace users in U-space airspaces follow a uniform framework of flight rules. The proposed UFR architecture is based on U-space levels, respective U-space services, and aircraft automation capabilities. UFR shall complement existing flight rules and leverage airspace access and flexibility of flight operations of all airspace users