In the United States, governmental organizations such as the FAA and NASA, as well as industry players, including ANRA Technologies are collaborating together to establish best practices and industry standards to make UAM a reality.<\/p>\n
On February 6th<\/sup> 2020, NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) and FAA hosted a critical meeting to discuss Concept of Operations for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) air traffic management. This was an opportunity for key stakeholders like ANRA Technologies to continue to provide input into the development of FAA\u2019s ConOps plan for UAM to enable near term early UML operations.<\/p>\n The possible use cases for UAM are constantly expanding, ranging from air emergency response services, private cars, cargo delivery, and flying taxies.\u00a0 While public perception, regulatory environment and standards are still evolving, we at ANRA believe early adopters will commence UAM services beginning with cargo delivery in rural and remote areas.\u00a0 Experimental testing in rural and suburban areas will benefit from the reduced risk of fewer air and ground hazards as opposed to densely populated urban areas.<\/p>\n A number of risk factors need to be evaluated before economies of scale and mass adoption is achieved.\u00a0 Gaining the public\u2019s trust and obtaining community support for mainstream UAM operations is paramount, especially for passenger carrying Vertical Takeoff and Landing Vehicles (VTOLs).<\/p>\n The cargo delivery concept has already been widely trialed with drones globally and is gaining acceptance due to the \u201cAmazon Effect\u201d, a disruption of the retail market revolutionizing e-commerce.<\/p>\n In recent UAS news, The Terra Drone group company, Antwork, has been transporting medical samples and quarantine materials to areas of Eastern China heavily hit by the coronavirus.\u00a0\u00a0 The first transport was made in 2020 via the first \u201curban air transportation channel.\u201d<\/p>\n While drones have already been tried and tested delivering smaller cargo, there is a need for unmanned aircraft to be able to do the same on a larger scale, delivering higher volume and heavier cargo on longer routes, including cargo handling automation.<\/p>\n High impact test runs can be deployed to disaster areas delivering emergency supplies.\u00a0 Unmanned cargo delivery can be deployed to remote geographies isolated from supply routes by hostile terrain or lack of infrastructure where inaccessibility to certain goods can slow economic development.<\/p>\n