Throughput Maximizing Takeoff Scheduling for eVTOL Vehicles in On-Demand Urban Air Mobility Systems

Abstract: Urban Air Mobility (UAM) offers a solution to current traffic congestion by using electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) vehicles to provide on-demand air mobility in urban areas. Effective traffic management is crucial for efficient operation of UAM systems, especially for high-demand scenarios. In this paper, we present a centralized framework for conflict-free takeoff scheduling of eVTOLs in on-demand UAM systems. Specifically, we provide a scheduling policy, called VertiSync, which jointly schedules UAM vehicles for servicing trip requests and rebalancing, subject to safety margins and energy requirements. We characterize the system-level throughput of VertiSync, which determines the demand threshold at which the average waiting time transitions from being stable to being increasing over time. We show that the proposed policy maximizes throughput for sufficiently large fleet size and if the UAM network has a certain symmetry property. We demonstrate the performance of VertiSync through a case study for the city of Los Angeles, and show that it significantly reduces average passenger waiting time compared to a first-come first-serve scheduling policy.