Urban Air Mobility

As cities become increasingly connected, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a key element in enabling people to reach their destination by the fastest, safest and most cost-effective manner. Driven by the challenges of urbanization and traffic congestion as well as increasing digitalization, the pace of change in urban mobility is accelerating and shifting towards more flexible, reliable, affordable, sustainable and user-oriented mobility. In this context, UAM will be used to transport people and goods in urban and suburban areas with compact aircraft. Their technology and architecture is expected to transport goods under all meteorological conditions and to bring people to their destination faster, quieter, with lower emissions and at lower cost than conventional aircraft. The smart integration of these vehicles into existing Air Traffic Management (ATM) system will be another key task. Since the introduction of commercial aviation, air traffic has been considered a very safe mode of transport, measured by the number of accidents per aircraft movement. These values must also be maintained for UAM, making UAM a further, efficient option in mobility using the third dimension. UAM vehicles are based on a combination of technologies that drive drones and control autonomous vehicles. These vehicles require no runways at all or, in the case of small fixed-wing aircraft, only very short runways; "Vertiport" pads with an edge length of a few meters should be sufficient for VTOL. At the same time, the integration into existing city infrastructure must be ensured, since the environmental risks are at a maximum here due to the density of people on the ground. The requirements for the implementation of UAM are

Ensure of the level of safety in urban demanding airspaces,
Logistically optimal, procedurally safe placement and design of take-off/landing areas and their connection to flight routes,
Intelligent bundling concepts (swarm flights, flow-oriented traffic guidance) of drones to serve temporary, locally centered high demand peaks, using artificial intelligence (AI),
predicting the complex microclimatic conditions in urban areas by means of robustly planned trajectories, and
Use of smart infrastructures for navigation and monitoring of drones, supported by real-time capable, cell-based communication networks (5G)

The Chair will contribute its many years of expertise from the field of conventional aviation in the core topics of Airspace Management, Safety and Trajectory Management and develop it into new UAM concepts. The cooperation with the newly founded Chair of Helicopter Technologies at the institute will also be beneficial for this undertaking.

Starting on May 1st, 2024, the TU Dresden launches the research training group RTG AirMetro, funded by DFG. Here, a total of 33 doctoral projects, along with associated projects at participating professorships, will focus on research related to Urban Air Mobility (UAM).

Current Research Projects

RescueFly
SmartFly

UAM Activities of the Chair

January 2022: BMVI-funded project RescueFly started - cross-county/ cross-state prevention and rescue with the help of drones

As part of the funding guideline "Innovative Air Mobility", the chair is working on an optimized rescue chain in the event of swimming accidents in lakes through the use of specially equipped drones, an intelligent drone garage and optimal search strategies for people in distress using combined sensor technology. The project is being carried out under the leadership of the Björn Steiger Foundation, Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security and in cooperation with BT U Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus Senftenberg, TU Chemnitz, THOLEG Civil Security Protection Systems and DRONIQ GmbH over a period of two years.

November 2021: SAB funded Project SmartFly started

Together with the Chairs of Aircraft Engineering (Prof. Markmiller) and the Working Group WIssensarchitektur - Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture (Prof. Nönnig) of the TU Dresden, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO and the Innovation Workshop of Phase 10 Ingenieur und Planungsgesellschaft, the Chair was awarded the SmartFly project. The goal is to analyze the feasibility of introducing air taxis in and around the Dresden region. For this purpose, demand models will be generated and applied using urban planning data, and possible network structures will be derived. The route network planning will be based on an APM for electrically operated multicopters, will take into account the citizen's willingness to pay and consider so far existing regulatory aspects according to the EU Regulation and EASA (SC and CS). The network cooperates with the German UAM model regions belongng to the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC), especially Hamburg and Ingolstadt.

September 2021: TV report on air taxis

Professor Fricke had the chance to comment on the topic: "When will the first air cabs arrive?". The market for air cab builders is growing - a Munich-based start-up for air cabs is now even listed on a US stock exchange. A means of transportation of the future? We ask whether the launch of air cabs is at all realistic. The program was broadcast on 21.09.2021 in the program 'Umschau' on MDR television.
The broadcast can be viewed via the following link:
"When will the first air cabs arrive?"

December 2020: New Innovation Committee for Logistics

Prof. Fricke has been selected as a member for the new Innovation Committee to the innovation programme Logistics 2030 by the BMVI. There, business and research representatives jointly develop a vision for cargo traffic and logistics, as the Ministry reported.

October 2020: Participation in the co-creation workshop of the project The Sky is the Limit in Berlin

At the workshop of the project The Sky is the Limit (Sky Limits), citizens and experts discuss the essential questions of the future use of airspace in our cities.

July 2020: Scientific dialogue "Are drones useful or dangerous?" mit Jörg Dittrich (DLR)

May 2020: Political participation in the unmanned aviation action plan

Unbemannte Luftfahrtsysteme und innovative Luftraumkonzepte

With the collaboration of the Chair, the Federal Government's action plan entitled Unmanned Aerial Systems and Innovative Aviation Concepts was developed.

January 2020: Keynote on "Opportunities and risks of UAM" for the 4th RotorDrone Forum Bückeburg

Prof. Fricke gave a keynote speech on 16.01.2020 at the 4th RotorDrone Forum in Bückeburg with the title "Chances and risks of UAM - mobility offensive for conurbations or gimmickry with high external costs for society?". Besides the possible applications of UAM, the main focus was on safety (operational safety), the associated risk for external parties and the resulting requirements for airspace and urban structure. More details about the event can be found on the webseite of UAV DACH.

October 2019: Expert discussion regarding drones, air taxis and mannend aviation in Dubai

Prof. Fricke traveled to Dubai in September in his function as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI). The aim was to exchange technical and political information in the field of research, development and industry in the field of transport with a special focus on manned and unmanned air taxis.

Dubai-20190908-010 — Treffen mit Ismaeil Al Balooshi, Assistant Director General for Aviation Safety Affairs, General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA)

August 2019: National Air Conference in Leipzig

On August 21, 2019, Prof. Fricke presented at the National Aviation Conference 2019 on the topics "New Mobility, Drone-Economy" and took part in the discussion with numerous high-ranking representatives of the industry. During the conference, an interview with Prof. Fricke was recorded in the journal Drones. This article was published in issue 1/2020 of Drones Magazine, the expert journal for commercial drone use.

April 2019: Handover of the report "Handling of drones in German airspace" to Federal Minister of Transport Scheuer

The report Drones in German Airspace: Transport Policy Challenges in the Conflict Area between Innovation, Safety, Security and Privacy of the Scientific Advisory Board was published with the collaboration of the Chair.

From December 2018: Contribution to the Advisory Board Unmanned Aviation at BMVI

In December 2018, Prof. Fricke was appointed to the Advisory Board for Unmanned Aviation of the BMVI by the Federal Minister of Transport.

Development of a new potential area

Since 2019, TU Dresden has been one of the eleven Excellence Universities in Germany. The Faculty of Transportation Sciences will become an important part of the new potential area Automated and Networked Mobility within the scope of the excellence. Urban Air Mobility will play a key role here.