Research

6 Things the State of Illinois Needs to Do to Advance AAM

The ‘Land of Lincoln’ charts a course toward Advanced Air Mobility

Home to nearly 9,000,000 people, metropolitan Chicago is, theoretically, an urban air mobility (UAM) air taxi operator’s dream. Or at least it would be, were it not for Chicago’s brutally cold winters. Winter temperatures average at, or just above, freezing during the day and -5°C (about 20-25°F) at night. And, then there’s the wind. In…

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In Urban Air Mobility – Especially in Urban Air Mobility – Time Is Money

Real-Time On-the-Fly Motion Planning Can Save Pilots Pax, and UAM Operators Time and Money

Your pax are onboard, you departed on-time. Your route was clear, weather was perfect and then – a geofence gets put up literally out of the clear blue sky. You want to minimize your snap trajectory and your trajectory but that’s easier said than done. Or it was, until a cohort of researchers from Cranfield…

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Eyes wide shut -- bad eVTOL pilot. Bad pilot.

Urban Air Mobility Will Stretch Pilot Fatigue Management in New Ways

Short-haul, multiple takeoffs and landings per day, and revolutionary, new eVTOL technologies will test pilot’s resilience in radically new ways.

Imagine yourself a taxi driver in New York City, London, Berlin, or Tokyo; dozens, maybe hundreds of trips in an 8-, 10-, maybe even 12-hour day. You’re doing what you can, as the movie Cabaret song said, to “earn a mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound.” Now, flash-forward to 2027 or 2030 and…

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Where California Leads, Will a UAM Nation Follow?

Regulations, Sustainability, Operations, and, Oh Yeah -- Taxes

Where California Leads, Will a UAM Nation Follow? By Nanci Mora With nearly 40 million people (13 million of them in metropolitan Los Angeles, 3 million+ in San Diego, and approximately 2.5 million in the San Francisco Bay Area) covering 160,000+ square miles (roughly 423,000 square kilometers), the state is an ideal sandbox for the…

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colorful graphic of state of California with eVTOL

Where California Leads, Will a UAM Nation — or the World — Follow?

Aircraft, Operating Environment, and Oh Yeah, Taxes

California’s nearly 40 million residents could set the gold standard for UAM.

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How Much Noise Will a Single Rotor Make When a Single Rotor Makes Noise?

Use the NASA RVLT Conceptual Design Toolchain to Predict Best Practices

In their paper, “Best Practices for Predicting Acoustics of a Single Rotor Using the NASA RVLT Conceptual Design Toolchain” presented at the Vertical Flight Society’s 6th Decennial Aeromechanics Specialists’ Conference held in Santa Clara, California in February 2024, NASA aerospace engineers Lauren Weist, Natasha Schatzman, and Dorsa Shirazi detailed the results of their study intended…

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