Urban Air Mobility Research Challenges and Opportunities

This article reviews the literature on urban air mobility (UAM), examining both the research challenges it presents and the transformative opportunities that make these challenges worth addressing. While UAM has historical precedents, the current iteration is born of novel aircraft technology, primarily electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) and electric short takeoff and landing (eSTOL) aircraft. These advances raise new questions in aerodynamics, control, and integration with urban infrastructure. We explore several key research areas, including aircraft design, vertiport development, network planning, and air traffic management. We also address the scalability challenges in air traffic management for high-density UAM operations and the potential of autonomous and remotely piloted systems. If new aircraft are to birth a new urbanism, they will do so by integrating aircraft engineering and computational intelligence in control, systems, robotics, and human factors.