Metropolis: Relating airspace structure and capacity for extreme traffic densities

Personal and unmanned aerial vehicles have received increasing media attention over the last decade. As a result of the growing excitement for these two aircraft types, many within and outside the aerospace industry envision a future in which large numbers of small aircraft fly over urban areas. With this vision for the future, the question...

Investigation of Merge Assist Policies to Improve Safety of Drone Traffic in a Constrained Urban Airspace

Package delivery via autonomous drones is often presumed to hold commercial and societal value when applied to urban environments. However, to realise the benefits, the challenge of safely managing high traffic densities of drones in heavily constrained urban spaces needs to be addressed. This paper applies the principles of traffic segmentation...

Constrained Urban Airspace Design for Large-Scale Drone-Based Delivery Traffic

Large-scale adoption of drone-based delivery in urban areas promise societal benefits with respect to emissions and on-ground traffic congestion, as well as potential cost savings for drone-based logistic companies. However, for this to materialise, the ability of accommodating high volumes of drone traffic in an urban airspace is one of the...