Simulator Evaluations of Higher Automation Autoflight Concepts for Various eVTOL Vehicle Configurations

Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing vehicles have the potential to unlock a new concept of urban mobility through the air but also introduce multiple challenges on how to integrate these revolutionary vehicles into the existing airspace with its various users. One mid-term airspace concept proposes integrating eVTOL aircraft at scale into complex, high-tempo airspace with diverse aircraft types through the development of new procedures, routes, communication protocols and cooperative airspace constructs including corridors. This paper presents simulator evaluations of proposed Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations and procedure concepts to examine efficacy of the operations from the perspective of pilots flying. Nine pilots were recruited to fly three dissimiliar, yet industry representative eVTOL aircraft designs with shared automation and control interfaces in the Vertical Motion Simulator at NASA Ames Research Center. Scenarios were designed to explore new airspace operation concepts including interactions with mixed-equipage traffic such as legacy transport traffic and other eVTOL traffic. Higher automation functionality is developed to meet the defined operational requirements, including a simplified vehicle command concept with assistive hover, autopilot and flight management capabilities. Results indicate that the higher precision navigational and temporal constraints were achievable with sufficient automation and identify some challenges associated with designing airspace procedures and operational concepts that serve a diversity of aircraft performance characteristics.