The impact of dispatching logic on the efficiency of Urban Air Mobility operations

The application of electrified propulsion systems is expected to facilitate the future operation of small aircraft in urban and suburban areas. However, in addition to the safe design of vehicles, efficient operation must also be achieved by matching passenger requests to unoccupied and suitable vehicles. In the agent-based transportation simulation MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation), a rule-based approach has been followed by assigning the nearest available vehicle to each passenger request. Sophisticated considerations such as pooling multiple passengers with identical trip requests in terms of time and location or the urgency of a request were only partially considered or not considered at all. To decrease operating costs, especially by reducing the number of passenger flights and avoiding relocation flights, appropriate dispatching is essential for efficient assignment of available vehicles to trip requests. For this purpose, the suitability of the Bipartite Matching Dispatcher (BMD), already proven for ground-based on-demand mobility concepts, was investigated for application to UAM systems by demonstrating its performance on an existing data set using a mock-up simulation and comparing it to the initial dispatcher in MATSim. Studies have not only shown the similarity between UAM and ground-based on-demand operations, but also the compatibility of BMD for high load traffic scenarios with undersized fleets. Insights on the impact of available information, for example, the prioritization of early-submitted requests over urgent requests, on the operator’s point of view can be concluded. For an efficient vehicle assignment, the consideration of passengers’ attitude towards possible comfort restrictions due to longer waiting times and incentives through price adjustments is of crucial importance.