Urban-Air Port collaborates with Coventry University on virtual reality to capture passenger experience

The Urban-Air Port (UAP) Air One ver­ti­port tech­nol­o­gy fea­tures exten­sive­ly in a new paper writ­ten by Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty, the first of a kind that uses human fac­tors research and vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) tech­nol­o­gy to inform on the suc­cess­ful design of infra­struc­ture to sup­port future mobil­i­ty.

The Air One ver­ti­port built in Coven­try City Cen­tre in April served as a demon­stra­tor of sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture for pas­sen­ger air taxis and autonomous drones for advanced air mobil­i­ty.

Air One cap­tures the tra­di­tion­al air­port envi­ron­ment and scales it down to fit with­in a con­densed foot­print, retain­ing key oper­a­tional and pas­sen­ger pro­cess­ing ele­ments such as check-in and secu­ri­ty, as well as retail and food and bev­er­age areas to cre­ate an enjoy­able trav­eller expe­ri­ence.

UAP devel­oped the Air One design ear­ly in 2021 as part of a suc­cess­ful bid for UK Research and Innovation’s Future Flight Chal­lenge Phase 2, work­ing with a con­sor­tium whose mem­bers includ­ed Coven­try City Coun­cil and Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty.

Urban-Air Port® cho­sen as a win­ner of the Future Flight Chal­lenge; to launch ‘pop up’ eVTOL air­craft hub in Coven­try this year

UAP col­lab­o­rat­ed with trans­porta­tion design­ers at the University’s Nation­al Trans­port Design Cen­tre (NTDC) to build an immer­sive VR envi­ron­ment of Air One, and pro­vid­ed Com­put­er Aid­ed Design (CAD) mod­els of the infra­struc­ture to cre­ate a 3D envi­ron­ment in which vol­un­teers for the study could then nav­i­gate using a VR head­set.

Con­duct­ed dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and under safe­ly con­trolled con­di­tions, par­tic­i­pants in the exper­i­ment were giv­en ‘cus­tomer jour­ney sce­nar­ios’ to com­plete, for exam­ple, a vis­it the Urban-Air Port Café, buy a cof­fee and then go to a gate to board an eVTOL vehi­cle.

Users were then asked to nav­i­gate the vir­tu­al Air One using sig­nage and wayfind­ing cre­at­ed by the NTDC. An analy­sis of the vol­un­teers’ reac­tions and respons­es to the vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment was assessed to ascer­tain the lev­el of acces­si­bil­i­ty and ease of nav­i­ga­tion, pro­vid­ing an insight into the effec­tive­ness of the ver­ti­port lay­out and wayfind­ing sys­tem through­out the infra­struc­ture.

As Urban-Air Port works close­ly with reg­u­la­tors and agen­cies on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of ver­ti­port design, human fac­tors research plays an impor­tant role in enhanc­ing the pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence and acces­si­bil­i­ty through wayfind­ing and nav­i­ga­tion with­in future mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture solu­tions.