The seventh European Framework Program (FP7) "Personal Plane" project (PPlane) aims to develop system ideas that enable personal air transport for the long term (2030 and beyond). Such a system will avoid the ever increasing congestion on European roads and offer an alternative to the current conventional transport system across Europe. PPlane will provide in all European countries, an additional component of a future efficient European multimodal transport system aiming at allowing all European citizen to travel anywhere in Europe, gate to gate, within 4 hour or lesss. The preliminary assumption made in the PPlane project is that automation should be developed to enable a "regular Joe" to use a personal aircraft, in various weather conditions, without any command and control difficulties, using a "push button" navigation interface.

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Transportation systems are currently being transformed by advances in information and communication technologies. The development of autonomous transportation holds the promise of providing revolutionary improvements in speed, efficiency, safety and reliability. Automated systems are ideally suited to supplement the existing mass public transport system with collective, semi-collective and personal on-demand and shuttle services. When demand is low or pickup points are far apart, they are much more effective than conventional public mass transport systems.. A wider take-up of automated transport systems within cites or city-like environments has yet to happen. Studies have shown new transport systems based on automation to have significant potential in areas of low to medium public transport demand and/or as a feeder service to the main public transport network. Further research is necessary in order to exploit the potential benefits of automation in road transport in a manner that is safe. This paper identifies key advantages of automated transport system as feeder service.

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In order to manage a multitude of drones deployed simultaneously in the same airspace, the European U-space should supplement its initial mandatory services with conflict detection and resolution services. The introduction of virtual 4D protection bubbles around drones could be a key enabler to ensure separation of aircraft, detect potential conflicts and monitor the effect of associated conflict resolutions. Simulations realized with a dense traffic over a city demonstrate the possibility to generate 4D bubbles in the strategic phase through the use of stochastic optimization algorithms. The addition of tactical monitoring tools ensures the resiliency of such 4D bubbles to unexpected events, such as strong winds. If 4D protection bubbles should facilitate the implementation of future strategic and tactical conflict management services, they could also be used to ensure the execution of initial U-space services.