Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AURORA (sAfe Urban aiR mObility for euRopeAn citizens.)
Reporting period: 2020-12-01 to 2022-05-31
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has the potential to overcome challenges like congestion and a lack of surface transport whilst saving infrastructure costs and time. However, making it safe, secure, green, quiet and accepted is challenging due to many factors, such as environment, regulations, and safety-critical technologies. Focusing on emergency-related applications, where UAM brings added value on top of current mobility solutions, the EU-funded AURORA project aims at connecting technologies and key actors to foster the adoption of UAM. The project works on development of intelligent, urban autonomous flight solution for UAVs and self-piloting passenger-carrying VTOL aircraft, including autonomous selection of emergency landing sites and landing capability, integration with Very Low Level Air Traffic Management, and utilizing GALILEO High Accuracy Service.
Inside the WP1 University of Pisa has made an in-depth analysis of the state of the art of UAM worldwide, to reconstruct an up-to-date state of art regarding UAM. The state of art analyzes both technical than Legal/Regulatory situation, also if the major focus has been done for the application side. Each UAM application has been divided in Inter-Governmental Urban Air Collaborative Programmes and general single worldwide Case Studies. each Case Studies has divided in application field (Vehicle Tecnology, Security, Health, Port, Civil, Emergency, Logistic, Passenger, Safety, Agricult and others). All case studies show that there is a growing demand for urban services based on air mobility worldwide. In particular, the use of drones sees most of the current applications, with a more mature market, like for operative services regarding private distribution logistics or emergency transport of goods. Applications relating to passenger transport are almost exclusively in the field of experimentation due to the greater complexity of both application and legislation (laws and regulations). An article was presented at an international congress with all results of the state of art analysis. Regarding the Smart mobility application, also inside WP1 and closely linked to WP5 regarding integration of urgent logistics elements and WP6 regarding Demonstration and Stakeholder Engagment (also linked to WP1-Public Acceptance). In this framework they has been involved in the project local, regional and national italian stakeholders.
The work for the WP6 is started at january 2021 because the individuation of the possible Case Studies, the involvment of the needed stakeholders (to have their collaboration in the design and authorization of the final tests) and the reach of the necessary project of the Case Studies can't be started at the 20th months, as previewed from the original time schedule, but we need to project final test before to be sure to close the test/Case Studies before the end of the project.
So, a first local stakeholder meeting has been done the 06/09/2021 in Portoferraio while before this date has been selected all possible stakeholder both to understand UAM acceptance than to have information about possible case studies to test in WP6. At the initial points, 18 Case Studies was individuated but, detailing the technical feasibility and the real interest of each stakeholder, only 8 Case Studies was individuated, divided into feasibility studies, simulation studies and real test studies as follow:
1) Emergent transport of drugs
2) Emergent test tubes transport
3) Emergent Organ Harvesting transport (with the prior consent of Hospital Management)
4) Emergent Transport of defibrillator throw the IMA emplyee time networks (case of hearth attack)
5) Emergent blood transport
6) Citizen-UAM communication (both directly thatìn throw a sensor networks installed on street (to be evaluate the sensor type)
7) Transport of emergent goods between Piombino and Elba island (Portoferraio)
8) Drugs transport from central warehouse (freight village of Guasticce, Leghorn) to regional hospitals
The first six case studies will be tested on real world, the case study seven will be simulate throw the Siemens simulator (University of Pisa has given to Simens all Carthografic tridimensional data to reconstruct the real twin) while the last case study will regard a feasibility study to do with the direction of the freight village.
In this months University of Pisa has made four different meeting with ENAC to verify the possibility to test in real world the transport of emergent goods between Piombino and Portoferraio but the conditions and constraints imposed by ENAC eventually led to the choice of a simpler simulation, in order not to exceed the time and budget available from the project (regarding in detail mainly the WP6).
Finally, regarding WP1 public Acceptance activity it has been individuated a sample of tourist and residents of Elba so to interview and organize a meeting as soon as possible using survey made from EPF.
At the moment the meeting is suspended due to problem regarding University Administration and the difficulty to use voucher for partecipant.
The work for the WP6 is started at january 2021 because the individuation of the possible Case Studies, the involvment of the needed stakeholders (to have their collaboration in the design and authorization of the final tests) and the reach of the necessary project of the Case Studies can't be started at the 20th months, as previewed from the original time schedule, but we need to project final test before to be sure to close the test/Case Studies before the end of the project.
So, a first local stakeholder meeting has been done the 06/09/2021 in Portoferraio while before this date has been selected all possible stakeholder both to understand UAM acceptance than to have information about possible case studies to test in WP6. At the initial points, 18 Case Studies was individuated but, detailing the technical feasibility and the real interest of each stakeholder, only 8 Case Studies was individuated, divided into feasibility studies, simulation studies and real test studies as follow:
1) Emergent transport of drugs
2) Emergent test tubes transport
3) Emergent Organ Harvesting transport (with the prior consent of Hospital Management)
4) Emergent Transport of defibrillator throw the IMA emplyee time networks (case of hearth attack)
5) Emergent blood transport
6) Citizen-UAM communication (both directly thatìn throw a sensor networks installed on street (to be evaluate the sensor type)
7) Transport of emergent goods between Piombino and Elba island (Portoferraio)
8) Drugs transport from central warehouse (freight village of Guasticce, Leghorn) to regional hospitals
The first six case studies will be tested on real world, the case study seven will be simulate throw the Siemens simulator (University of Pisa has given to Simens all Carthografic tridimensional data to reconstruct the real twin) while the last case study will regard a feasibility study to do with the direction of the freight village.
In this months University of Pisa has made four different meeting with ENAC to verify the possibility to test in real world the transport of emergent goods between Piombino and Portoferraio but the conditions and constraints imposed by ENAC eventually led to the choice of a simpler simulation, in order not to exceed the time and budget available from the project (regarding in detail mainly the WP6).
Finally, regarding WP1 public Acceptance activity it has been individuated a sample of tourist and residents of Elba so to interview and organize a meeting as soon as possible using survey made from EPF.
At the moment the meeting is suspended due to problem regarding University Administration and the difficulty to use voucher for partecipant.
In this first part of the project it has been done a very detailed analysis of the state of art, individuating the actual level of impact of UAM in every field (social, safety, security, logistic, smart mobility). The involvment of the different stakeholders evidences a growing interest in the UAM field also if it regards mainly goods transport while, for passenger transport there is always a bit of skepticism.
The Case Studies extracted indicate the real needs for UAM in many emergency situation.
The test will open new application of UAM and the merge with the sensors will help the introduction of autonomous vehicle, also if it will be difficult, with the actual legislation and safety requirements to apply it to real world.
The Case Studies extracted indicate the real needs for UAM in many emergency situation.
The test will open new application of UAM and the merge with the sensors will help the introduction of autonomous vehicle, also if it will be difficult, with the actual legislation and safety requirements to apply it to real world.