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Electronics
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Urban Air Mobility
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Urban Air Mobility

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Systems & Control Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 March 2022) | Viewed by 18224

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Rafael Casado

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computing Systems, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain
Interests: control systems; autonomous navigation systems; unmanned aerial vehicles; air navigation and air traffic management systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Aurelio Bermúdez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computing Systems, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain
Interests: autonomous navigation systems; unmanned aerial vehicles; air navigation and air traffic management systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the short term, airspace in the metropolitan environment will be shared by traditional manned vehicles and (mainly electric) unmanned vehicles, flying at low or very low levels, covering a wide range of services, and contributing at the same time to reducing the carbon footprint left by our daily activity. In this sense, the concepts of urban air mobility (UAM) and unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) are currently being developed by public and private organizations both in Europe and America. Apart from other important aspects, such as regulation and safety, many technical challenges must be addressed for this scenario.

This Special Issue focuses on all the technical issues related to UAM, including the design and evaluation of new vehicles, safe navigation, and traffic integration. We invite the scientific community to provide high-quality contributions with consolidated and evaluated research related to this promising investigation area.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • UAM concept of operations (SESAR U-space and NextGEN UTM architectures);
  • Unmanned aircraft system (UAS) traffic management (UTM);
  • Low-altitude airspace monitoring;
  • Collision-free air navigation (path planning, following, and tracking; obstacle avoidance; conflict detection and resolution);
  • Manned/unmanned aircraft coexistence in integrated airspaces;
  • Cooperative/swarm navigation;
  • Autonomous (non-remotely piloted) navigation;
  • eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicles;
  • Air-to-air and air-to-ground communications;
  • UAM services (people and goods transportation, wireless communications support, surveillance, inspection of critical infrastructures, precision agriculture, health, emergency management, etc.);
  • UAM modeling, simulation, and evaluation;
  • Other issues (environmental, social, economic, regulatory, etc.)

Prof. Dr. Rafael Casado
Prof. Dr. Aurelio Bermúdez
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Urban air mobility (UAM)
  • Unmanned aircraft system (UAS) traffic management (UTM)
  • SESAR U-space/NextGEN UTM
  • Low-altitude airspace monitoring
  • Collision-free air navigation
  • Manned/unmanned aircraft coordination
  • Cooperative/swarm navigation
  • Autonomous navigation
  • Air-to-air and air-to-ground communications
  • eVTOL vehicles
  • UAM services
  • UAM modeling, simulation, and evaluation

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 2586 KiB  
Article
Marker-Based 3D Position-Prediction Algorithm of Mobile Vertiport for Cabin-Delivery Mechanism of Dual-Mode Flying Car
by Hyansu Bae, Jeongwook Lee and Kichang Lee
Electronics 2022, 11(12), 1837; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11121837 - 9 Jun 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1471
Abstract
This paper presents an image-processing technique for cabin delivery employing local localization and docking in a mobile station, which is a mobile vertiport for the use of dual-mode flying cars. A dual-mode flying automobile with an aerial electric vehicle (AEV), a ground electric [...] Read more.
This paper presents an image-processing technique for cabin delivery employing local localization and docking in a mobile station, which is a mobile vertiport for the use of dual-mode flying cars. A dual-mode flying automobile with an aerial electric vehicle (AEV), a ground electric vehicle (GEV), and a cabin is a future method of transportation that can be used in both the air and on the ground. To enable AEVs to land in a specific position, a landing site is necessary. The proposed AEV uses vertical take-off and landing, and a vertiport landing site is required. As vertical take-off and landing sites require a lot of space and are challenging to operate in multiple positions, we suggest a mobile vertiport that can fit into a small space. A mobile station is appropriate for dual-mode flying cars since it includes critical activities such as transporting AEVs from the ground and charging as well as a cabin-delivery system. The mobile station can generate a path to the AEV by calculating the relative position using the markers attached to the AEV and estimating the position of the landing AEV. The mobile station detects a marker for precise positioning correction, followed by exact position correction for cabin delivery, to travel to the accurate position of the AEV. To increase the success rate of cabin delivery, docking markers are identified and the angle position error between the mobile station and cabin is computed and corrected to rectify the position between the cabin and the mobile station for cabin delivery. In addition, the experimental results revealed a mechanically correctable error range that encompassed all experimental values. Consequently, this study showed that image processing may be used to create a mobile station for dual-mode flying automobiles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Mobility)
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16 pages, 4324 KiB  
Article
Priority-Aware Conflict Resolution for U-Space
by Jesús Jover, Aurelio Bermúdez and Rafael Casado
Electronics 2022, 11(8), 1225; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11081225 - 12 Apr 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2149
Abstract
In the context of the future urban mobility airspaces, U-space lays the foundation for unmanned aircrafts to be integrated with conventionally manned traffic to offer a multitude of services to citizens and businesses, such as urban public transport, goods movement, parcel delivery, etc. [...] Read more.
In the context of the future urban mobility airspaces, U-space lays the foundation for unmanned aircrafts to be integrated with conventionally manned traffic to offer a multitude of services to citizens and businesses, such as urban public transport, goods movement, parcel delivery, etc. Given these extensive possibilities, it is estimated that thousands of aircrafts (or even more) from different owners will share common airspace volumes, and the probability that all of them will travel without colliding is extremely low if no means are put in place to prevent it. This paper aims to introduce the reader to the conflict management policy proposed in U-space and proposes a new version of the PCAN (Prediction-based Conflict-free Adaptive Navigation) algorithm to adapt to this policy. In particular, the new implementation of PCAN takes into account a more than likely classification of flights according to their priority. The evaluation of this priority-aware algorithm shows that it is still possible to avoid any conflict between the set of aircraft in flight, with an insignificant detriment to higher priority flights, while maintaining minimal detriment on average. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Mobility)
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29 pages, 3012 KiB  
Article
Safe and Efficient Take-Off of VTOL UAV Swarms
by Carles Sastre, Jamie Wubben, Carlos T. Calafate, Juan-Carlos Cano and Pietro Manzoni
Electronics 2022, 11(7), 1128; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11071128 - 2 Apr 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1776
Abstract
Currently multicopters are facing a continuous growth in terms of recreational uses, and multiple companies focused on these aircrafts to facilitate certain tasks that were nearly inaccessible to humans, or otherwise involved a great cost. In this context, the drone swarm concept allows [...] Read more.
Currently multicopters are facing a continuous growth in terms of recreational uses, and multiple companies focused on these aircrafts to facilitate certain tasks that were nearly inaccessible to humans, or otherwise involved a great cost. In this context, the drone swarm concept allows us to broaden and incorporate new, more refined applications in which various aircraft coordinate with each other to carry out large-scale tasks. When the number of UAVs involved becomes too high, guaranteeing that the take-off procedure is efficient and yet secure becomes quite complex. Hence, in this paper we propose and validate different algorithms to optimize the take-off time of drones belonging to a swarm, with the objective that there are no collisions between them. In particular, we propose algorithms for both trajectory analysis and batch generation for take-off. Based on a large number of experiments using the ArduSim simulator we prove that the proposed algorithms provide a robust solution within a reasonable time frame when testing with different aerial formations. In addition, we will assess how different UAV position assignment strategies impact our algorithm performance in terms of take-off time and number of batches required. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Mobility)
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25 pages, 6005 KiB  
Article
Vertiport Operations Modeling, Agent-Based Simulation and Parameter Value Specification
by Lukas Preis and Mirko Hornung
Electronics 2022, 11(7), 1071; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11071071 - 29 Mar 2022
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3030
Abstract
Urban air mobility (UAM) is the idea of creating a future mobility market through the introduction of a new mode of aerial transport with substantial travel time advantages. A key factor diminishing travel time savings is vertiport processes. So far, vertiport throughput capacity [...] Read more.
Urban air mobility (UAM) is the idea of creating a future mobility market through the introduction of a new mode of aerial transport with substantial travel time advantages. A key factor diminishing travel time savings is vertiport processes. So far, vertiport throughput capacity has only been studied in a static manner using analytical methods, which has been found to be insufficient. This paper wants to increase the level of understanding of operational dynamics on vertiport airfields by being the first to apply agent-based simulation. For this purpose, an existing vertiport model consisting of pads, gates and stands was refined through two means. First, a sensitivity study with over 100 simulations was executed shedding light on the driving processes on a vertiport airfield. Second, an expert interview series with 17 participants was conducted, letting the experts evaluate the model and specify relevant parameter values. Three main results should find mention here: (1) Pad operations were identified to be most impactful on passenger delays. (2) Pad and gate processes have a threshold capacity beyond which delays increase exponentially. (3) A refined vertiport model is presented, including the 27 most relevant parameters and their value specification. In conclusion, this paper finds that optimized vertiport airfield design is crucial to UAM operations, and dynamic passenger and vehicle interactions cannot be neglected. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Mobility)
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38 pages, 11440 KiB  
Article
Design and Analysis of VTOL Operated Intercity Electrical Vehicle for Urban Air Mobility
by Arumugam Akash, Vijayaraj Stephen Joseph Raj, Ramesh Sushmitha, Boga Prateek, Sankarasubramanian Aditya and Veloorillom Madhavan Sreehari
Electronics 2022, 11(1), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11010020 - 22 Dec 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 8613
Abstract
This paper discusses the conceptual design of an intercity electrical vertical take-off-and-landing aircraft. A literature survey of existing eVTOL aircrafts, configuration selection, initial sizing, weight estimation, modelling and analysis was conducted. The present intercity eVTOL aircraft has the capability to carry four passengers [...] Read more.
This paper discusses the conceptual design of an intercity electrical vertical take-off-and-landing aircraft. A literature survey of existing eVTOL aircrafts, configuration selection, initial sizing, weight estimation, modelling and analysis was conducted. The present intercity eVTOL aircraft has the capability to carry four passengers along with one pilot for a distance of 500 km. Two specific aircraft modes, such as air-taxi and air-cargo mode, are considered in the present design. Market entry is predicted before 2031. Subsequently, innovative technologies are incorporated into the design. The present design features an aerodynamically shaped fuselage, tapered wing and a V-tail design. It can carry a nominal payload of 500 kg to a maximum range of 500 km at a cruise speed of Mach 0.168. The present eVTOL is comprised of a 5 m-long fuselage and an 11 m wingspan. It utilizes six tilt-rotor propeller engines. The maximum take-off weight and empty weight are 1755 kg and 1255 kg, respectively. The unit price is expected to be between USD 14.83 and 17.36 million. This aircraft has an aesthetically pleasing, intelligent and feasible design. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Mobility)
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