SBIR/STTR Award attributes
To explore and establish Urban Air Mobility (UAM) viability, researchers need to assess vertiport designs and the operational concepts that aim to maximize throughput of aircraft, passengers, and cargo while maintaining safety. Many of these future vertiports, especially those in urban areas, will have highly constrained airspace and limited area for surface operations. To understand how to create safe and efficient vertiport surface layouts and airspace procedures, there is a need to model and evaluate a range of vertiport characteristics under a range of operational conditions. The Vertiport Surface and Airspace Modeler (VSAM) provides the ability to design, visualize, and evaluate vertiport elements including local airspace procedures, final approach and touchdown (FATO) areas, touchdown and liftoff (TLOF) areas, taxi routes, aircraft parking spots, and recharging areas. VSAM includes automation and analysis tools that let researchers evaluate and refine vertiport surface and airspace topologies. VSAM models arrival, departure, surface, and turnaround operations to support integrated operational assessments of the vertiport surface and airspace design.
