Drones

Vertiport Automation Brent Klavon ANRA Op Ed

Can urban air mobility thrive without better infrastructure? In this guest post, Brent Klavon discusses the urgent need for vertiport automation.

The following guest post is an original comment by Brent Klavon, Vice President at ANRA Technologies. DRONELIFE does not make or accept payment for guest posts.

Are vertiports the weakest link in the UAM ecosystem?

The news is full of stories about flying taxis and how these unmanned aircraft are ushering in a new era in aviation. A recent study commissioned by NASA defines this concept as “…the future of aviation includes urban air mobility (UAM) – a concept that encompasses aircraft, air traffic management and new infrastructure.”

The UAM ecosystem includes electrically powered aircraft that transport people and cargo from node to node, with each node representing a vertiport or airport. Highly functional and high-performance Vertiports are critical to the commercial success of the UAM industry. However, with the exception of NASA-sponsored efforts and the recent International Standards Committee (ASTM), the focus has largely been on the physical requirements for vertiports rather than the appropriate digital architecture, potentially creating a bottleneck at the nodes designed to make it possible movement, not impede. Does this lack of attention to ventiport digitization present a weak link for UAM to realize its enormous potential?

To fully realize the market potential for UAM, a higher level of aircraft autonomy is required, and the systems that support this automation must keep pace. NASA notes that vertiports need improvements in shared decision-making, planning, airspace management, demand capacity balancing, and service synchronization to avoid bottlenecks and ensure safe operations across the UAM network. These vertiport capabilities need to be harmonized using new automation services that share data with stakeholders across the ecosystem to incorporate the existing traffic management system. As technology advances, there is a need to define the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, especially when new vertiport automation services overlap traditional air traffic control responsibilities.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) states in its report on the societal acceptance of UAM: “At the moment, the development of vertiports seems to be mainly through collaborations between experienced infrastructure players and UAM aircraft manufacturers, although the manufacturers also support the development of Some of the UAM have demonstrated their own concepts. Some infrastructure players have also demonstrated concepts that they are developing themselves that would be compatible with various UAM aircraft manufacturers. But at the moment the interoperability of these concepts is difficult to assess.”

ANRA sees a growing need for the development of vertiport automation software and data interfaces to enable integration between operators (logistics and passenger companies), providers of complementary data services (monitoring, weather, etc.), vertiports services (pad availability) and broader Aeronautical systems to enable promotion of international open standards for interoperability between UAM actors. Without a focus on interoperability, the likely result will be proprietary, closed systems, rendering individual vertiport networks inaccessible to each other and to the broader air transport system.

The UAM industry needs a convenor, a champion, most likely a government agency with no commercial competitive interests, to enable it to incentivize industry participation from organizations that share pieces of the proverbial Vertiport automation puzzle. A suitable consortium could jointly achieve meaningful industry-wide outcomes to drive Vertiport’s automation requirements, data interface requirements, system performance criteria, regulatory considerations, standards, public acceptance and market exploitation. Such a consortium would include at a minimum aircraft manufacturers, airspace managers, design-build firms, air navigation service providers, local governments, supplemental data service providers and fleet operators working with regulators. Efforts undertaken without extensive stakeholder research risk creating a weak link in the future UAM network.

A recent study by McKinsey and Company found that “Large and dense metropolitan areas such as London, Los Angeles and Mumbai will eventually require networks of up to 30 vertiports, or AAM [vertiports] Landing pads at small airports. McKinsey continued, “Even medium-sized metropolitan areas like Atlanta and Dusseldorf could need as many as 20.” With no purpose-built vertiports yet, vertiport automation solutions must also work in traditional airports in order for traditional airports to capitalize on new UAM market opportunities.

ANRA Technologies directly benefits from NASA and SESAR research and studies through participation in their UAM projects as an airspace management service provider. These activities, along with co-lead standards development activities, provide ANRA with a unique perspective on the industry’s journey to market. ANRA advocates the development of a flexible service-based architecture that is becoming increasingly integrated into today’s air transport systems. This requires an interoperable system, enabled by open technical standards, connecting multiple vertiports. This approach provides a reduced-risk implementation scheme for an expandable network, starting with one to two vertiports airports, then scaling to more over time. Let’s solve this puzzle together and avoid introducing a weak link.

Read about the NASA Advanced Air Mobility Project, the FAA’s Steve Dickson on Urban Air Mobility and new global UAM efforts.

Brent Klavon is Vice President of ANRA Technologies and has been involved in numerous international projects related to Advance Air Mobility. He is familiar with the tension between politics, regulation, standards, technology and social acceptance. A retired US Navy pilot, he is an FAA-certified commercial pilot and long-distance pilot. ANRA Technologies is the world’s only UAM airspace management provider currently providing services to two of the largest and most comprehensive UAM projects: NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign and Single’s Very Large Demo UAM project by ATM Research (SESAR). European Sky named AMU-LED. For both efforts, ANRA provides simulations and live flight support for multiple eVTOL aircraft for a variety of use cases.

Miriam McNabb is Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a marketplace for professional drone services, and is a fascinated observer of the burgeoning drone industry and drone regulatory environment. Miriam has authored over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam graduated from the University of Chicago and has over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for emerging technologies.
For advice or writing in the drone industry email Miriam.

Twitter: @spaldingbarker

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