A Modular Urban Air Mobility Simulation Toolchain with Dynamic Agent Interaction

Abstract

We present a modular simulation toolchain for urban air mobility (UAM), used to investigate interdisciplinary challenges in research fields like transportation planning, air-traffic research, control systems and telematics. The framework can be enhanced to evaluate the connection between travel times and demand, or the inter-dependence of U-Space regulations and self-separation performance. In an example scenario, UAM demand is based on the share of passengers using existing modes in a transportation model. Missions for urban air routes are computed on a layered grid, and conflicts are resolved in a pre-departure scheduling. The multi-agent simulation framework based on OMNeT++ integrates complex dynamics and guidance, navigation, and control algorithms, as well as different communication protocols like 5G. We evaluate a workflow for the city of Hamburg with several thousand flights, based on transportation-related key-performance-indicators.