Development of a Modular Model City for Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle Experiments – a Visionary Concept

Abstract

Several Urban Air Mobility (UAM) companies are currently in the ground and flight testing phase of their product development, aiming to enter into daily business in the current decade. Moreover, the number and variety of unmanned aircraft systems’ applications constantly grows, reaching from agriculture to medical services. However, the majority of flight tests in Europe is not being conducted in a public manner due to regulatory barriers, and a missing representative urban environment. To overcome this challenge, the German Aerospace Center plans to set-up a model city for investigations on UAM operations in an urban model environment. UAM includes the holistic consideration of airspace users in the urban environment, i.e. in particular drones and future air cabs. The envisioned infrastructure shall be used for testing in all facets of the urban air mobility context, such as vehicle concepts, flight planning and sensor technologies as well as acceptance studies, in a protected environment. The planned model city will not represent a specific metropole in a small scale but aims to represent typical areas of a larger central European city in all its diversity. Based on literature research, typical density of buildings, arrays of buildings and their height were identified as key figures. Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach, i.e. considering flight guidance, communication and navigation, and flight system requirements as well as environmental and civil restrictions, is outlined in this paper.