Capacity of a constrained urban airspace: Influencing factors, analytical modelling and simulations

The traffic density of small aerial vehicles operating within urban environments is expected to increase significantly in the near future. This urban environment is highly constrained due to being limited to the low-altitude airspace directly above the existing road network. Multiple studies have addressed factors influencing the capacity of...

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...

Metropolis II: Investigating the Future Shape of Air Traffic Control in Highly Dense Urban Airspace

Metropolis II aims to provide insights in what is needed to enable high-density urban air operations. It does this by investigating the foundation for U-space U3/U4 services. The final goal is to provide a unified approach for strategic deconfliction, tactical deconfliction, and dynamic capacity management. Highly-dense operations in...

Limitations of Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Constrained Very Low-Level Urban Airspace

Road traffic delay and urban overcrowding are increasing rapidly all over the world. As a result, several companies have proposed the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) as an alternative to road-based transportation. These small autonomous drones are expected to operate within a thin airspace band (Very Low Level) in high traffic...

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...

Estimation of traffic density from drone-based delivery in very low level urban airspace

Driven by rising consumer demand, interest is growing in the application of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for the last-mile delivery of small express packages and fast-food meals in cities. To be realised, this would require the Very Low Level (VLL) urban airspace to be able to cope with high traffic densities of commercial...

Drone Delivery: Urban airspace traffic density estimation

The concept of autonomous drone delivery in urban areas has gained a favorable amount of media attention over the past few years. Companies such as Amazon, Uber and Matternet are investigating the use of drones to transport parcels in order to solve the disaggregate delivery (last-mile) problem. This solution could potentially reduce vehicular...

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...