Reinventing Mobility Paradigms: Flying Car Scenarios and Challenges for Urban Mobility

Abstract

Flying vehicles are receiving more and more attention and are becoming an opportunity to start a new urban mobility paradigm. The most interesting feature of flying cars is the expected opportunity they could offer to reduce congestion, traffic jams and the loss of time to move between origin/destination pairs in urban contexts. In this perspective, urban air mobility might meet the concept of “sustainable mobility”, intended as the ideal model of a transport system that minimizes the environmental impacts by maximizing efficiency and travel speed. For transport engineering planning issues, further knowledge is required in this field to understand the effects that a possible urban air mobility system, including the ground traffic component, could have in terms of sustainable mobility in the above meaning. This paper contributes to this topic by providing an analysis of different urban flying car scenarios by using an agent-based approach with different traffic conditions. The preliminary results obtained on some test networks and focusing on travel cost effects suggest that the expected advantages the flying car will depend on trip origin/destination points, average distances travelled in the urban contexts and the location of transition nodes, which are introduced as interchange nodes between aerial and ground mode.

Future smart cities: requirements, emerging technologies, applications, challenges, and future aspects

“…The use of flying cars (obviously under meticulous planning and control) can provide an efficient and faster solution to this issue [187]. A recent study in this regard [188] which was focused on agent-based approach, finds out that trip origin/destination points, average distances traveled in the urban contexts, and the transition location nodes are the main factors that impacts travel cost. Making such travel cost-effective and bearable is a critical challenge in making further progress in this regard.…”

Intelligent Amphibious Ground-Aerial Vehicles: State of the Art Technology for Future Transportation

“…Consequently, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) technology make sense for urban ground/aerial transportation. VTOL is less influenced by the surroundings, has greater flexibility [30], and more fitness when operating in complex and unknown environments [31]. This technique is originally derived from unmanned aerial vehicle.…”

The Environmental and Resource Dimensions of Automated Transport: A Nexus for Enabling Vehicle Automation to Support Sustainable Urban Mobility

“…Given that PAVs will be based on rotors and will act as big fans creating air disturbance and thus air nuisance (95), maximum sound decibels, at certain times of day and days of week and within an appropriate distance of densely populated areas, will be required to inform a comprehensive noise ordinance to advise sustainable flying car operation (95,100). Future policy considerations should account for environmental concerns (101), by informing the commuting population about the possible environmental effect of PAVs, possibly within a comparative context including conventional vehicles, EVs, as well as CAVs (102).…”