Urban Air Mobility: Design of a Virtual Reality Testbed and Experiments for Human Factors Evaluation

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has the potential to transform the transportation landscape for movement of small number of passengers and good across citywide distances. However, the successful integration of such a concept into the National Air Space will require a significant effort focused on development and testing of both the vehicles and the supporting infrastructure. In this paper, the development of a virtual reality (VR) environment for testing urban air mobility operation concepts has been presented. The VR environment that is simulated in a CAVE system includes a quadcopter type vehicle that can transport passengers across citywide distances. The design features are primarily focused on cockpit input and display interfaces while the vehicle’s motion is sufficiently realistic. An experimental design to execute a mission in San Francisco city has been tested by participants with and without prior piloting experience. Preliminary analysis of the flight data collected indicates minimal impact of prior flight experience in completing the mission.