Constrained Urban Airspace Design
Exploring future rules, strategies, and risk
A. Morfin Veytia (TU Delft - Control & Simulation)
J. Ellerbroek – Promotor (TU Delft - Operations & Environment)
J.M. Hoekstra – Promotor (TU Delft - Operations & Environment)
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Abstract
There is increasing interest in deploying autonomous air vehicles or drones in urban environments for missions such as package delivery to emergency medical transport. These missions have the potential to ease ground congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in cities.
Operating in an urban environment poses challenges to air vehicles that are distinct from traditional air traffic management. Mainly, drones will need to avoid both dynamic (other drones) and static (buildings and city infrastructure) obstacles during flight. Additionally, the expected densities will be orders of magnitude larger than what is currently seen in conventional airspace.
However, this thesis limits the analysis to constrained airspace, where drones operate in urban areas between tall buildings and/or other infrastructure. This means that drones are restricted to fly along a constrained network that is above the existing street network or any other pre-defined network with a fixed route topology. In constrained airspace, drones can no longer fly directly to their destination and have points of convergence at the intersections of the network.
This thesis focuses on addressing challenges and risks of high-density air operations in constrained urban environments via two research goals. Thesis goal 1 analyses how airspace designs and rules affect the safety and efficiency of the urban airspace at varying traffic density. Thesis goal 2 develops and evaluates a method for analysing the operational feasibility of urban air missions considering local wind conditions.