On 17 May 2022, AiRMOUR, AURORA, Flying Forward 2020 (FF2020) and USEPE Project hosted the 'Urban Air Mobility for All' workshop in Brussels to ensure the projects' Urban Air Mobility innovations meet citizens' and stakeholders' needs. A group of 20 professionals with different knowledge and backgrounds presented several angles that depict the complexity of this new form of mobility.

Representatives from health associations, disability groups, the aviation sector, researchers on urban mobility and students working in this field participated in the workshop to discuss potential UAM use cases. Lisa van der Heijden (FF2020), Katie Bulanowski (AURORA), Lucy Mascarenhas (AiRMOUR) and Manon Coyne (USEPE) were present to share information about the projects with the participants.

Topic of discussion

The main question was: are there use cases for which UAM is the best possible solution? Naturally, other questions by participants followed, such as: Who will enforce rules and regulations? Why create an additional mobility route when there are currently other viable options? Is the industry the creator of this demand, or is it a natural evolution of mobility? Will citizens have more control over these developments?

Conclusion

In the end, the discussions revealed that citizens and stakeholders require more data about Urban Air Mobility to understand in depth what its consequences are (e.g., noise and pollution) and its benefits for citizens (e.g., delivery of medical supplies to remote areas).

Flying Forward 2020 and the other projects involved in the workshop are currently carrying out UAM demonstrations in cities. The data gathered from these tests will help answer some of the questions that arose during the workshop in the near future.

Check back for more workshops at which we will elaborate on this mobility technology advancement.