Unravelling User Perspectives on Automated Urban Air Mobility: A Virtual Reality Approach

To address future mobility needs, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is emerging as a new transport concept, integrating electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles into existing transport networks. However, despite significant investment and advances in the technology, potential adopters remain sceptical towards it, with safety, environmental concerns, and practicality presenting the most pressing issues. As several barriers hinder real-life testing of possible solutions, virtual reality (VR) offers a practical tool to explore some of the emerging issues. This demonstration simulates an airport-to-city UAM shuttle, presenting three scenarios with variable weather, cabin interfaces, and abnormal events in a high-fidelity representation of a potential use case. As such, it provides a groundwork for future exploration of UAM acceptance factors in VR studies.