Urban Air Mobility (UAM) will only be realized if the amount of people and vendors participating grows at a sufficient rate that allows for UAM to be profitable and beneficial to the passengers, airside service providers (ASPs), vertiport operators, and other stakeholders. With the economy of scale, larger fleet sizes will bring down prices, and lower prices will encourage a greater number of passengers from a larger economic background to participate. To this end and given that UAM is based on on-demand services where there is not a known schedule to establish a cost basis, we anticipate that the costs associated with a daily operation of an ASP in UAM will be highly dependent on cost feedback, subject to the very dynamic state of the UAM system. Our innovation provides an on-demand cost estimate of the cost of point-to-point ASP services given the current state of the UAM system. With effective cost feedback, ASPs and Vertiport operators can optimize their costs, make intelligent routing decisions, and accelerate the growth of UAM.
NASA can potentially use our SBIR technology to estimate costs and benefits of UAM in different urban environments. Our SBIR technology can help build the business case for UAM, can provide the cost estimates for different trade studies associated with UAM, and can be directly integrated into fast time simulations, Human in the Loop (HITL) simulations, and analytical studies supporting UAM.
ASPs and Vertiport operators will likely incorporate our SBIR technology into their operations to provide timely on-demand cost estimates to aid in UAM decision support . Our SBIR technology can help to make cost estimate comparisons associated with trial plans, flight plan reroutes during nominal, off-nominal, and emergency events, and to assess the impact of those decisions after the fact.