An overview of current research and developments in urban air mobility – Setting the scene for UAM introduction

Recent technological advances provide the means for potentially realizing urban air mobility (UAM) as a passenger transport mode for intra- and inter-urban transport. However, questions regarding regulations, infrastructure requirements, and economic constraints remain to be answered. Therefore, this review aims at giving an overview on different research areas in the emerging topic of UAM. To this end, findings from several fields within the UAM research community were gathered and are presented here to provide a landscape of relevant questions surrounding the implementation of UAM. This overview considers vehicle-related aspects, such as aircraft requirements and aircraft classification for intra- and inter-city passenger transport, and discusses potential hurdles to their introduction. The exploration of challenges includes questions on certification and policy, as well as challenges in the area of traffic management and ground infrastructure requirements. Besides that, literature on operational concepts, possible market structures and the interaction with existing transport systems will be reviewed. The discussion of hurdles will conclude with a summary of current literature on public acceptance of UAM. An overview of methods for modelling and simulation of UAM will wrap up the prior discussion and provide insights on first modelling results.