PhD Forum: Sustainable Route Planning and Efficient Computation Offloading in Urban Air Mobility

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) encompasses both piloted and autonomous aerial vehicles, spanning from small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like drones to passenger-carrying personal air vehicles (PAVs), to revolutionize smart transportation in congested urban areas. A pivotal concern is the sustainability of switching to this transportation mode since clean technology is essential when designing new solutions from the ground up. Recent studies indicate that a major contributor to the total energy consumed in UAM is the flight operation of the aircraft itself. This paper presents a novel approach to meet the energy needs of UAM flights by exploring a dynamic route-planning problem that harnesses solar energy en route, thereby making this new transport mode eco-friendly. Some results and preliminary analysis are presented to highlight the utility of the scheme. Other areas of implementing UAM from a computational perspective are mentioned briefly as a roadmap for future work.