Air Traffic Control for Urban Air Mobility
Abstract
Design and industrial development efforts for work drones providing services such as deliveries, surveying, environmental protection, etc. are rapidly growing. Larger drones (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing, eVTOLs) for passenger transport are only a few years away. With increasing numbers of flight movements, the emerging use of passenger drones will eventually create the need for enhanced air traffic control (ATC) services. Based on elaborate research studies by aircraft manufacturers and consultancy firms, D3 sees the inflection point when demand will become highly visible in the timeframe 2026-2028, with 1000s of daily eVTOL movements over major metropolitan areas.
Traditional air traffic control service providers act as public administrations and they follow mandatory regulations (usually embedded in legal code). As such, they will most likely not be able to provide cost-effective service and they are too slow to adapt to managing new eVTOL categories, in high-density traffic, and at very low altitudes. As a matter of fact, the large Western regulators (FAA and EASA) have already stated that urban air traffic control will not be developed and/or operated by governmental bodies and that they expect to see a new competitive field for urban air traffic management.
The limiting factors of airspace capacity today are air traffic controllers’ workload and the cognitive capabilities of pilots on the one hand and the ability to ensure vehicle trajectories to very close tolerances on the other. To make urban air mobility at scale a reality, a paradigm shift for air traffic management is needed.
While first concepts and ideas for future automated air traffic management exist, they are generic in nature and not linked to any technology development.
Systems built for managing non-passenger-carrying UTM cannot be “upgraded” to reach the safety level required for regulatory certification.
The D3 Air Vehicle Control System (AVCS) will be a central part of a city’s future urban air mobility ecosystem and it will offer access to all stakeholders. D3 is approaching its design task systematically. We are engaged with the regulatory community to monitor and influence the rulemaking process.
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