BARCELONA -- South Korea's major telecom company KT has presented a solution that realized urban air mobility flight scenarios in virtual reality at an annual mobile device exhibition in Barcelona. Using the platform called "Urban Air Traffic Management," pilots can explore multiple scenarios in a virtual world before they operate flying taxis in real life.
Urban air mobility (UAM) is a next-generation ecosystem that incorporates flying passenger vehicles in urban areas. To ensure safety and prevent accidents involving pedestrians on the ground, aerial vehicles must navigate through designated air corridors. Vertiports will be installed in secure locations such as rooftops. Through a public-private consultative body that includes major mobile carriers such as KT and SK Telecom, South Korea aims to commercialize manned drone taxis in 2025.
KT said in a statement that its UAM management service called “Urban Air Traffic Management (UATM)” was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024. UATM was created by integrating artificial intelligence with digital twin technology, which provides a virtual replica of an infrastructure often utilized as testing grounds for new technologies to figure out the results of real-life situations.
The solution also secured an algorithm that offers optimal routes. KT mentioned that UATM finds ideal routes by considering many different factors such as population density among multiple flight paths between UAM vertiports. KT earlier cooperated with the Republic of Korea Air Force Academy to verify the new platform's safety within the Seoul area.
Meanwhile, South Korea plans to start the demonstration of flying passenger vehicles Ara Waterway, a canal that connects the Han River that flows through Seoul with the Yellow Sea, in August 2024. Before the demonstration, the government will establish a regulatory sandbox regarding flying vehicles by May of this year.
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