How to Get Advanced Air Mobility into the Sky

Imagine the year is 2035. Your plane has just landed at LAX, and you need to get to your hotel in the South Bay. Traffic on the 405 is at a standstill, however, so you pull out your phone, open an app and order an air taxi. You walk over to the nearby vertiport, where a multi-rotor aircraft has just finished charging, waiting for you to board. You climb in and the air taxi quietly lifts itself in the air, without a human pilot, and flies you over the Los Angeles cityscape to your destination in just a few minutes. As a result, you get to enjoy an afternoon at the beach, instead of sitting for hours in LA traffic.

This is how a future with advanced air mobility (AAM) could look.

AAM is a new class of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft larger than most cars yet much smaller than traditional commercial aircraft. It is optimal for short-distance flights within cities and suburbs. Several companies are planning to launch fleets of such aircraft in the next few years, opening a whole new form of aerial transportation for passengers and cargo.

While incredible progress is being made by these companies, the success of the AAM sector is not guaranteed. There are still several key challenges companies will need to address as they develop air taxis. These challenges include autonomy, range, infrastructure, and certification, and digital transformation can help ensure they are solved in time for market. By examining and addressing these four issues, AAM will have a significantly better shot at becoming ubiquitous by the year 2035.

The Need for Autonomous Flight

Most companies working in the AAM industry today plan to launch their initial aircraft with pilots, and eventually move to vehicles that are autonomous – capable of uncrewed flight. This path has several advantages, including a faster initial type certification and therefore a faster time-to-market, and likely faster customer acceptance. The disadvantage to starting with a piloted air taxi is that the vehicle will eventually require redesign and then recertification without a pilot. AAM operators will also have to make fundamental changes to the way they operate the new vehicles.

Autonomy is a crucial factor in ensuring the eventual profitability of the AAM sector as it will allow the AAM sector to scale to hundreds or thousands of vehicles per city, without needing to add hundreds or thousands of pilots as well.

Training to become a licensed commercial pilot can cost $100,000 and require 1,500 flight hours, yet the business plan for most AAM operators is to offer AAM flights for the same cost per passenger mile as an Uber Black. Imagine what would happen to the cost of an Uber ride if all their drivers required the same investment in training as commercial pilots. It would not be a sustainable business model. The same is true for air taxis.

While most AAM companies have decided to go to market with a human pilot present in the vehicle first, and then transition to autonomous operations later, not all companies are taking this approach. Wisk has decided to make its aircraft autonomous from the very beginning, operating uncrewed flights monitored by remote supervisors. This is a longer path to initial operating capability, but will not require costly redesign and recertification.

Time will tell which strategy will lead to better results, but in either case, autonomy is intertwined with the future of the AAM industry.

Optimizing Range

The expected range of the initial set of AAM vehicles is about 100 miles. This is a function of existing battery technology, which most companies are planning to use to power their aircraft. There is only so much power that can be packed into existing batteries – something called “energy-density.” Batteries have been used to power ground based electric cars and trucks for many years, but there are some unique safety requirements for vehicles that fly.

This image shows the use of Siemens technology for an eVTOL structural simulation. (Image: Siemens Digital Industries Software)

If an electric car’s batteries die, the vehicle can stop on the side of the road while the vehicle operator calls for assistance. If an air taxi’s batteries die, it will likely crash. AAM operators must take several steps to make sure that will never happen. Like all commercial aircraft, AAMs will be required to land with reserve power. They also will require far more power to fly into the wind than to fly with it. These factors and more reduce the range of AAM vehicles.

Extending AAM profits and margins is directly tied to extending air taxi operating ranges. The most direct path to extended range is higher energy-density batteries. This will provide more route options, vehicles that can carry more passengers, and longer operation between charging. To achieve favorable operating margins most AAM operators will likely require the energy-density of batteries to double, new ways to maximize the energy from batteries, or alternative options to power AAM flight such as hydrogen.

A Siemens simulation of the interior of a future vertiport. (Image: Siemens Digital Industries Software)

Rethinking Infrastructure

An Uber Black can pick someone up directly from their office or home, but AAMs are too large to just land anywhere a car can drive. Introducing a fleet of air taxis to a city will require building the infrastructure to support them. Fortunately, air taxis do not need runways. They can take off and land vertically in facilities called vertiports. These are specialized facilities — a cross between an airport and bus station — where AAM aircraft can land and take off, charge their batteries, and be serviced.

When a passenger wants to take an air taxi somewhere, they will travel to the closest vertiport to board one. The challenge is building enough vertiports to make AAM travel a viable option. Consider the example at the beginning of this article. If there were still 10 blocks of heavy traffic between the hotel and the closest vertiport, the time it takes to travel between them could render the whole point of AAM moot. Vertiports will need to be strategically placed in sufficient numbers around cities to ensure they are a viable form of transportation for those who need them.

Achieving Certification

AAM is an entirely new class of aircraft, but like every airplane and helicopter that came before it, everyone wants to make sure they are safe to fly for the passengers that fly in them, the other aircraft sharing the sky, the ground crews that service them, and all the people in the cities they fly over. Certification is not only key to the safe operation of air taxis, but also required before revenue flights can begin.

The FAA in the United States, and other regulatory agencies around the world, are working with companies to define new rules and regulations regarding how AAM vehicles are designed and built, but there are many operational considerations as well. These include defining an air travel corridor for air taxis to travel through above a city, determining how they would interact with air traffic controllers, and liability if things go wrong, especially if the air taxi is autonomous. Companies will need to work with regulatory agencies to work out these new legal complexities, and guarantee the safety of this new industry.

The Role of Digital Transformation

All these issues are certainly solvable, but if the AAM sector wants to ensure a successful launch by 2035, they will need to rely on digital transformation.

Think about the Boeing 707, the aircraft that launched the commercial jet age. Digital technology was not around during the time the 707 was being developed. Engineers relied on paper documents and physical testing to understand and prove their designs. All in all, it took eight years of development before the 707 was finally able to lift off the ground.

Meanwhile, autonomous flight, battery power, infrastructure, and certification for AAM incorporate much more complex technologies and challenges compared to what went into the 707 decades ago. AAM companies will not have the time or resources to understand and solve them through physical testing alone.

This is where digital transformation enters the stage. With tools such as the comprehensive digital twin, companies will be able to construct their designs virtually before they do so physically. They can then simulate this virtual representation of their aircraft to find errors far sooner in the product lifecycle and adapt their designs to what they uncover. This enables engineers to better understand the complexities of these four challenges and release an optimized, safe AAM design to market in a timely manner.

The AAM sector is at an exciting moment with multiple enterprising companies trying to get the sector into the air. To be successful, those companies will need to deliver a viable product to market, and digital transformation will be the key to doing just that. Leveraging the latest in digital technology to overcome the challenges of autonomy, range, infrastructure, and certification can guarantee that in 2035 you can skip traffic and fly from LAX to South Bay in time to enjoy an afternoon at the beach.

This article was written by Todd Tuthill, Vice President of Aerospace & Defense, Siemens Digital Industries Software (Plano, TX). For more information, visit here  .