Development of Android-based Messaging Application for Onboard Communication for UAM Simulation

Abstract: The Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concept utilizes vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft for on-demand passenger and cargo air transportation services in metropolitan areas. Various designs of UAM vehicles have been developed, but research is needed to achieve their integration with the existing national airspace system to ensure flight safety and efficiency. The concept of simplified vehicle operations (SVO) can be applied to UAM to allow for novice pilots to operate the vehicle more easily and reduce the operation complexity and demands on trained personnel for mission management. Voice-based pilot-ATC communications have been shown as a major source of workload, which will also likely impact UAM pilots. Text-based communication could potentially reduce pilot’s workload and voice communication errors. In this work, we report on the development of a messaging application for pilot and vertiport (VP) manager/air traffic controller (ATC) communications. The system consisted of an Android tablet installed with a custom application for pilots and a Windows-based application for VP manager/ATC. The text-messaging application was compared to voice communications in a user study involving pilots taking off and landing at six vertiports around San Francisco Bay area while communicating with an ATC/VP managers to acknowledge their flight plans and flight plan changes. Participants were interviewed following the study to gain insights on their perceptions of the UAM operations tested and the messaging application. The results showed that the communication mode did not affect workload, but pilots reported higher situation awareness with voice communication. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted on the debriefing data, which provided recommendations on the design refinement. Based on the user feedback, an automated feature was added to the messaging application to facilitate the transition between vertiports. The revised interface will be evaluated in a future user study.

Keywords: Urban air mobility, pilot-controller messaging application, simplified vehicle operations

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005723

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