Crown Consulting chosen to conduct study into the economic impact of Urban Air Mobility in Ohio

Crown Con­sult­ing has been cho­sen by Ohio’s Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (ODOT) to con­duct a six-month study into the impact of advanced autonomous air­craft tech­nolo­gies on the US state’s econ­o­my.

Work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati and NEXA Cap­i­tal Part­ners LLC, Crown will esti­mate the eco­nom­ic impacts of intro­duc­ing and main­tain­ing urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty (URAM) and unmanned air traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) sys­tems in man­aged air cor­ri­dors con­nect­ing Ohio’s major urban cen­ters.

Researchers will exam­ine the use of drones, autonomous car­go air­craft, mede­vac organ trans­plant deliv­ery, air taxis and oth­er advanced autonomous air­craft sce­nar­ios across the state.

Of par­tic­u­lar focus will be the Inter­state 71 cor­ri­dor, which is near­ly 350 miles long and the main high­way which con­nects Cleve­land, Cincin­nati and Colum­bus — Ohio’s most pop­u­lous city.

Crown Chair­man and CEO, Al Khan, said: “Ohio is a leader and one of only a hand­ful of loca­tions in the coun­try set­ting an ambi­tious path toward advanced air mobil­i­ty. The state’s polit­i­cal and finan­cial com­mit­ments match its rich avi­a­tion her­itage. We are hon­ored to help the state advance to the next strate­gic lev­el with data and analy­sis of these trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies.”

Crown’s work will sup­port ODOT’s Dri­veO­hio ini­tia­tive, which is focused on advanc­ing smart mobil­i­ty in Ohio and being a one-stop shop for those look­ing to devel­op, test and deploy advanced mobil­i­ty solu­tions in the state.

The study also aims to pro­vide crit­i­cal data which ODOT will use to plan how best to lever­age advanced autonomous air­craft tech­nolo­gies to ben­e­fit the state.

Kel­ly Cohen is the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati’s Head of the Depart­ment of Aero­space Engi­neer­ing and Engi­neer­ing Mechan­ics in UC’s Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing and Applied Sci­ence. He directs the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cin­ci­nat­ti’s UAV Mas­ter Lab, where stu­dents engi­neer inno­v­a­tive unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy and appli­ca­tions.

He said: “This study is one of the first of its kind in the Unit­ed States and will be watched across the coun­try. Our UC UAV Team is extreme­ly excit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this impor­tant work.

“ODOT is at the fore­front of invest­ing in these tech­nolo­gies in a thought­ful way to enable viable busi­ness cas­es while assur­ing the pub­lic that oper­a­tions will be safe and valu­able to its cit­i­zens. Colum­bus’ SmartC­i­ty ini­tia­tive is a path find­er with­in the U.S. and they are think­ing about how to con­nect trans­porta­tion modes to include advanced air mobil­i­ty.”

Ohio is home of the Wright Broth­ers, John Glenn, Neil Arm­strong and 21 oth­er astro­nauts, boasts key avi­a­tion and aero­space assets such as NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Cen­ter in Cleve­land, Wright Pat­ter­son Air Force Base in Day­ton. More than 600 aero­space com­pa­nies are in the state and it is also the USA’s largest aero­space sup­ply sec­tor.

Crown’s Sci­ence & Research team works with states, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, NASA and indus­try part­ners to plan and deploy advanced air mobil­i­ty sys­tems.

The team helps clients advance manned and unmanned air­space inte­gra­tion, infuse auton­o­my into air mobil­i­ty solu­tions, devel­op and assess air vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy con­cepts, and man­age and use big data for real-time safe­ty and oper­a­tional sup­port.