Sphereabout: A Spherical Intersection Design for Networked Urban Air Mobility

Abstract

Urban aerial mobility is rapidly expanding, specifically on-demand Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) delivery services in urban environments. This necessitates management of the low-altitude airspace network to ensure smooth and safe traffic throughput. This study introduces a novel three-dimensional aerial network design inspired by a terrestrial transportation graph network for UAV networked mobility. Utilizing two-way tube corridors for node-to-node delivery and a spherical roundabout model, as "Sphereabout", to optimize the traffic flow through the spherical intersection. Through this architecture, three-dimensional conflict-free air mobility management can be achieved via numerical experiments and utilizing the geometrical features of this intersection.