Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a new air transportation system for passengers and cargo in urban environments, enabled by new technologies and integrated into multimodal transportation systems. The vision of UAM comprises the mass use in urban and suburban environments, complementing existing transportation systems and contributing to the decarbonization of the transport sector. Initial attempts to create a market for urban air transportation in the last century failed due to lack of profitability and community acceptance. Technological advances in numerous fields over the past few decades have led to a renewed interest in urban air transportation. UAM is expected to benefit users and to also have a positive impact on the economy by creating new markets and employment opportunities for manufacturing and operation of UAM vehicles and the construction of related ground infrastructure. However, there are also concerns about noise, safety and security, privacy and environmental impacts. Therefore, the UAM system needs to be designed carefully to become safe, affordable, accessible, environmentally friendly, economically viable and thus sustainable. This paper provides an overview of selected key research topics related to UAM and how the German Aerospace Center (DLR) contributed to this research in the project "HorizonUAM - Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)". Selected research results on the topics of market potential and public acceptance, vehicle design (including battery degradation, onboard systems, cabin design, cabin simulation), infrastructure, operations (including U-space, safe autonomy, navigation, communication, cost modeling) and overall system modeling are briefly presented.

The German air rescue and healthcare system is facing a number of changes and challenges, that require a rethink in the development of new rescue helicopter concepts. As part of its research activities, the German Aerospace Centre is, therefore, developing the concept of a medical deployment vehicle as part of a future and alternative rescue helicopter fleet. New economic, technical or performance-related framework conditions go hand in hand with necessary changes for the cabin interior and a large number of different user groups. In order to capture the large and diverse requirements spectrum and to translate them into future cabin interior concepts, a deep understanding and involvement of key user groups in the early design process is necessary. Human-centered design methods such as Co-Design offer a wide range of possibilities here. As part of Human-centered Design, the Co-Design approach is an important method, enabling the collaborative development of complex concept ideas among designers, end-users and various stakeholders. Through early and active involvement, Co-Design facilitates the incorporation of users' emotional factors and experiences with a product, enabling an iterative feedback and optimization process. This allows designers to gain an enhanced and quantifiable understanding of different user experiences and to create concepts from the perspective of the user and their context. Additionally, and merged with Co-Design, immersive technologies such as Extended Reality (XR) offer high potential to make future concepts feasible and to implement requirements and optimizations in real-time. In light of the diverse possibilities offered by combining the Co-Design approach and Extended Reality, this paper presents the applied XR Co-Design approach for the design of a future medical deployment vehicle cabin design concept. The methodological approach therefore follows two steps. First, to gain deeper insight into the experiences and requirements of different user groups in their professional context, an online survey was conducted. Using an informative online booklet, user groups were provided with an initial glimpse of the new concept and enabled to establish a connection between the novel concept and their own requirements. In the second part, an immersive Co-Design workshop allowed user groups to develop their own creative ideas and translate them using virtual reality and a digital prototype. The presented XR Co-Design approach demonstrates an effective method for developing complex cabin interior concepts and offers versatile application points for transferring the method to other transportation concepts of the future. At the same time, the workshop results provide a precise and human-centered basis for the detailed design of a digital medical deployment vehicle concept for the future.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a new air transportation system for passengers and cargo in urban environments, enabled by new technologies and integrated into multimodal transportation systems. The vision of UAM comprises the mass use in urban and suburban environments, complementing existing transportation systems and contributing to the decarbonization of the transport sector. Initial attempts to create a market for urban air transportation in the last century failed due to lack of profitability and community acceptance. Technological advances in numerous fields over the past few decades have led to a renewed interest in urban air transportation. UAM is expected to benefit users and to also have a positive impact on the economy by creating new markets and employment opportunities for manufacturing and operation of UAM vehicles and the construction of related ground infrastructure. However, there are also concerns about noise, safety and security, privacy and environmental impacts. Therefore, the UAM system needs to be designed carefully to become safe, affordable, accessible, environmentally friendly, economically viable and thus sustainable. This paper provides an overview of selected key research topics related to UAM and how the German Aerospace Center (DLR) contributed to this research in the project "HorizonUAM - Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)". Selected research results that support the realization of the UAM vision are briefly presented.

In the course of developing digital and future aviation cabin concepts at the German Aerospace Center, the exploration of user-centered and acceptance-enhancing methods plays a central role. The challenge here is to identify the flexible range of requirements of different user groups for a previously non-existent transport concept, to translate these into a concept and to generate a rapid evaluation process by the user groups. Therefore, this paper aims to demonstrate the application of the user-centered Design Thinking method in the design of cabin for future air taxis. Based on the Design Thinking approach and its iterative process steps, the direct implementation is described on the combined airport shuttle and intracity UAM concept. The main focus is on the identification of key user requirements by means of a focus group study and the evaluation of initial cabin designs and key ideas by means of an online survey. Consequently, the creative design process of a digital prototype will be presented. In addition to an increased awareness and acceptance among the population towards a novel mode of transportation, the application of the Design Thinking methodology offers a flexible and user-centered approach for further testing and simulation scenarios.

In the summer of 2019, the Bertelsmann-Foundation caused quite some commotion in the medical world in Germany. Their study on the density of the hospitals and clinics in Germany showed that the current amount of 1900 could be reduced to 600. Even if it was considered too extreme, it did stir a change. There is a plan to gradually reduce the number of hospitals down to 1200, making the hospitals and clinics better equipped to treat a broad variety of medical issues. This has as a direct consequence that those hospitals will not be equally accessible for the entire population. People living in rural areas might end up having more than 30 minutes journey to the nearest hospital, in best case scenario when the traffic is light. As the current primary rescue helicopters are not equipped for the near future missions, there is a need for an air vehicle that will cover the requirements posed by as well the changes in the medical system as the patients.On the other side, the cities are growing bigger, causing traffic density to increase as well. Time that an ambulance needs to reach the place of medical emergency varies per city, and steadily increases over the years, due to the ever-growing traffic. Current Medical Personnel Deployment (aerial) Vehicle are off the shelf smaller helicopters, often still too big for its intended purpose. In January 2020, a new project within German Aerospace Center has started, bearing the name Chaser, as a means of answering to above challenge. Its goal is developing two different aerial vehicles with a bespoke cabin design. As the cabin is an integral part of the vehicles, its design is considered equally important to other components and will be developed parallel to the vehicle development. In order to ensure that the cabin is well fitting the needs of its users, a user centered approach will be applied according to the Design Thinking Method. There are three distinctive sorts of users in this case: medical personnel, vehicle operators and the patients. The current and future needs and desires of all three groups shall be considered through means of co-design, a method that will provide an insight in what users actually need. Considering the complexity of the vehicle, a close cooperation with other design disciplines, such as flight performance, structures and aerodynamics is required. This paper will show the mission definition of the two vehicles, the method used to gather and analyze the required data, the trend analysis as well as forth flowing requirements. The results of the co-design workshop series, expert in-depth interviews and user journey maps will be shown, as well as an example of possible design outcome. To wrap up, an outlook into the future project work will be depicted, including the conceptual design solutions for the posed challenges.

For years, manufacturers and research institutions around the world have been working on various concepts to start a new era of urban and suburban transportation for people with so-called Air Taxis. However, the social acceptance of this new type of mobility is widely assumed to play an essential role in the future development of this field. Since passengers of future Air Taxis will spend most of the trip inside the cabin area, the desire for safety and privacy within the cabin might have a substantial impact on people´s opinions about such vehicles. Therefore, users are being involved in the design process of future Air Taxi cabins from the very beginning as part of the Horizon UAM project at the DLR German Aerospace Center. For this purpose, an online survey was initiated in July 27, 2021 and completed in October 19, 2021, resulting in 202 valid datasets of participants from various demographic groups in Germany. One survey part focused on factors of safety and privacy and was divided into two stages. In the first stage, respondents were asked to share their personal experiences and opinions about safety and privacy in public transport. In the second stage, six different scenarios for UAM cabins were presented. All scenarios used cabins with four seats in two rows of seats facing each other, including different types of partition walls. For evaluating each concept, participants were asked to imagine themselves being on a 10-15 -minute flight with an Air Taxi. Both in a scenario as a solo traveler and as a traveler with an accompanying person, the overall evaluation of each concept had to be given with respect to privacy, safety and comfort.The response pattern of the first part indicates, that the hygiene of a seat in public transportation was perceived to be particularly important. Furthermore, respondents showed a strong preference to have a free seat next to them, while group seating areas with four seats seemed to be rather avoided. Moreover, it tended to be relatively unimportant for the participants to be able to see the driver of the public vehicle. The response pattern of the second part suggested, for instance, that respondents seemed to decline partition walls in case they disturb the visual contact with an accompanying person. Accordingly, the absence of any partitions was also rated relatively positive, for the scenario of traveling with companion. In trips without an accompanying person, sharing a separated area with a foreigner tended to be evaluated rather negatively, especially when facing each other. However, complete separation from all fellow passengers also received a substantial amount of negative evaluations.Consequently, future Air Taxi cabin design concepts should avoid fully closed compartments with two foreign travelers facing each other. Therefore, flexible separation concepts might be considered in order to create an individual level of safety and privacy inside UAM cabins. The findings of the survey provide important information for future cabin design of air taxis. By involving the population into the process, the acceptance towards new modes of transport might be increased.

Various manufacturers express the vision of using air taxis for passenger transport in cities within a few years. However, current research shows that the society is still sceptical about air taxis. There are numerous factors influencing acceptance and willingness to use air taxis. One of them is a pleasant and comfortable cabin design. Within a user-centered-approach, this research investigates, what preferences people have on the interior design of future air taxis. For this purpose, a focus group study was conducted within the project HorizonUAM, including different demographic groups. On the one hand, a differentiation was made based on age, with a group of 18-39- year-olds and another of 40-65-year-olds participating. On the other hand, a distinction was made according to residential location in two additional groups. One group entailed small- and medium-town residents and the other group entailed metropolitans. In a first step, the participants were asked to name their requirements on vehicles and its cabin. In a second step, they were asked to develop a design concept for an air taxi cabin according to their preferences. The findings indicate, that the notion of air taxis meets the participants’ basic transportation requirements like flexibility and short travel times. In terms of cabin design, aspects that are significant to all participants have been discovered. These include noise, windows and room temperature. However, in the design concepts of the individual groups the main emphasis differs. The group of the 18-39-year-olds emphasizes modern technologies and eco-friendliness. The 40-65-year-olds prefer a modular cabin-set-up. Residents from small- and medium-towns favor a cabin design, which includes different groups of people such as families or cyclists. Finally, metropolitans put their focus on individuality. Consequently, future cabin design concepts of air taxis should consider the identified preferences and requirements.

In the scope of InDiCaD (Innovative Digital Cabin Design), a project at German Aerospace Center (DLR), research has been done on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the willingness of the passengers to fly under the given circumstances. The research covers three scenarios; firstly, one where Covid-19 has left no traces, secondly one where the consequences are enormous and thirdly, one where the passengers are still willing to travel, albeit with an extra set of demands concerning their health. These scenarios were used to create a mission definition for the cabin of the future as well as to establish fictional persona’s, representing the passengers of the future. To conclude, couple of rough ideas resulting from the research is shown.

This paper addresses issues currently present in the aircraft cabin design process. It focuses on making the design process more time and cost efficient, while altogether involving the end-users (passengers and cabin crew) in the development process in its earliest stages. By understanding the underlying issues and reasons the cabin is developed according to the current approach, new methods are established and adapted to suit the needs of such a complex process. In this paper, the preposition is made that Virtual Reality is the key technology for achieving the following goals: shortening the initial cabin design process (from sketch to concept design) and including the end-users and their wishes and ideas into the ideation phase. Through cooperation with an external design agency, a Virtual Reality tool is implemented and tested to ensure the theory behind the established design methodology can also be put into practice.

Within German Aerospace Center (DLR), a project called HorizonUAM was launched in July 2020. Its main goal is to develop and design an aerial vehicle which would support the infrastructure of the ever-growing cities and strengthening the connection between as well the big cities as cities with their suburban areas. The vehicle will be designed for the four different scenarios: airport shuttle, intracity transport, intercity transport and suburban connection. This paper shows the research concerning the potential users of the vehicle including their requirements and shows a possible design solution for an airtaxi cabin. The process has followed the Design Thinking Method, ensuring a central role for the users. To determine whether there are potential passengers willing to use such a vehicle, in-depth research has been done. Data found in previously done research has been compared with results of the in-house research, consisting of a number of workshops with representatives of German population as well as results form questionnaires sent out to a different group of German population. During the workshops, the subjects were asked not only to indicate their opinion on the airtaxis, but also to create their own version of it. This was done following the so-called Disney method, creating the solution in three stages: dreamer, realist and critic. Based on this data, different fictive personas are created, to aid in understanding of the user’s needs. In addition, trend analysis on how the urban mobility is developing, has also been executed. The state-of-the-art solutions available are analyzed and their strengths and weaknesses determined. The entire research has resulted in an extensive list of requirements for the design of the cabin. To address such a complex design challenge, a morphological chart has been created, systematically deconstructing the main function into subfunctions. This has been done by multiple workshops with a constant team.

In order to deal with health threatening emergencies and the risk of infections during flight, a concept design for a multifunctional and medical separation area (MMSA) in an aircraft cabin has been developed and will be presented in this paper. The foundation for the conceptual design process is the identification of central user groups, their ergonomic properties and their medical needs. With regards to a high level of usability and safety, architectural dimensions and positions of the concept within existing types of aircraft cabins have been investigated and defined. One challenge within the design process was to highlight and adapt worldwide-valid infection prevention regulations on a new type of aircraft cabin areas. The second challenge was the development of additional flexible and multifunctional use cases in order to offer an added value for. As a result, one concept with three use cases will be presented and analyzed with regards to the vital requirements.