Next-Gen Maintenance Framework for Urban Air Mobility Vehicles

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles are set to revolutionize the mobility of man and material in near future. One of the key areas to explore is how operational efficiency can be maximized through the next generation Maintenance framework. The UAM operational models may fundamentally change how aircraft maintenance is conducted. An important aspect of UAM is low altitude flying. This enables cellular technologies to be leveraged for air-to-ground as well as air-to-air communication. This implies a low cost, high speed air-to-ground data pipe is available, which leads to the concept of Digital Twin to be leveraged to optimize the operation and maintenance. This enables near real time availability of the state of UAM vehicle and its subsystems, even when it is flying. This paper captures the Next-Gen Maintenance framework along with several value-added services that can be built around it.