Energy Efficient Arrival with RTA Constraint for Urban eVTOL Operations

The electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis can alleviate transportation congestion on the ground by utilizing three-dimensional airspace efficiently. However, the endurance of Lithium-ion Polymer (Li-Po) batteries imposes severe constraints on the operational time span of an eVTOL vehicle on an urban air mobility (UAM) passenger transport mission. This research focuses on the formulation of fixed final time multiphase optimal control problem with energy consumption as the performance index for a multirotor eVTOL vehicle. The proposed multiphase optimal control problem formulation and the numerical solution enables the eVTOL air taxi to meet the given required time of arrival (RTA) and achieve the most energy efficient arrival trajectory, which is a critical enabler for the safe and efficient future eVTOL operations for passenger transportation and cargo delivery. The problem formulation is validated in a UAM passenger transport use case with EHang 184 eVTOL air taxi and an Uber proposed vertiport in numerical simulations. However, this proposed framework can also be used to address an energy efficient cargo delivery case in a UAS traffic management (UTM) context.

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