AURORA—Creating Space for Urban Air Mobility in Our Cities

Abstract

As cities grow larger, they increasingly face problems caused by transport and traffic. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) offers a promising opportunity to mitigate road (surface) congestion by taking urban mobility to the third dimension – the airspace. However, making it safe, secure, green, quiet and accepted is still challenging. The EU-funded project AURORA (sAfe Urban aiR mObility for euRopeAn citizens) is developing safety-critical technologies to support autonomous flight UAM in urban environments, focusing its demonstrations primarily on emergency-related applications. Urban Air Mobility is a fairly new concept for European cities and regions. Integration of UAM services and operations into existing mobility plans, in particular SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans), is hindered by various technological, regulatory, economic, environmental, social and operational barriers. To address these challenges, AURORA brings together a multidisciplinary team with expertise in aeronautics, smart mobility, intelligent transport systems, urban planning and citizen engagement. To foster adoption of UAM, the project involved relevant stakeholders in its journey from the start. This paper will address the results of this stakeholder involvement, tackling the challenges and opportunities that citizens, policy-makers and mobility experts see in these new related to UAM. We will look into the integration needs, the environmental concerns, the aviation safety and security requirements and understand the societal challenges around this new level of mobility.