Following the successful completion of the DLR HorizonUAM project, which investigated innovative air mobility (IAM) concepts and their components as a whole, a separate project is now being dedicated to a central component, the vertiport. The new VERTIFIED (Vertiport Research Infrastructure for Innovation Exploration and Demonstration) project is the next step towards the safe introduction of air taxis and the necessary infrastructure in urban and regional areas.
Development, construction and validation of vertiports
As take-off and landing points for air taxis, vertiports represent the central link between air and ground and therefore passenger transportation. Research is needed to ensure that they can be integrated into today's multimodal transportation system in the future and that air taxis can go into commercial operation in a few years. The DLR project VERTIFIED deals with the conceptual development, construction and validation of vertiports. The focus is on two areas of application: vertiports in urban areas and vertiports at airports. Various DLR institutes as well as external partners are involved in the project in order to investigate the research questions on vertiports holistically. The project is being led by the Institute of Flight Guidance and will run for four years, from July 2024 to June 2028.
In VERTIFIED, a regular exchange takes place between the DLR institutes, but also with relevant stakeholders from industry, science and society, in order to gather and take into account further views and perspectives.
The comprehensive Vertiport real-life laboratory
In VERTIFIED, the researchers will work out the necessary vertiport concepts and develop key components, including the U-Space services. The expertise of cooperation partners can also be used in this context.
At the National Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (DLR site at Magdeburg-Cochstedt Airport), two real technology demonstrators for vertiports will be created as part of VERTIFIED. The infrastructure will be built on a 1:1 scale so that these vertiport prototypes can be used for flight tests under realistic conditions. Thanks to the modular and flexible design, various scenarios can be tested on these vertiports in order to provide realistic answers to different research questions.
This real-life laboratory is intended to deliver comprehensive results and findings to pave the way for the commercial use of Innovative Air Mobility (IAM). In future, the flexible demonstrators will be available both internally at DLR and to external stakeholders and partners for the validation and demonstration of new concepts and technologies at and in the vicinity of vertiports.
On October 9, 2024, the Institute of Flight Guidance hosted the 4th Urban Air Mobility Symposium in Braunschweig. That year's event focused on research into vertiports and intermodal mobility.
The symposium also included the Stakeholder Forum for the DLR project VERTIFIED, which develops research infrastructure for vertiports. The forum was also held in Braunschweig on the second day of the event, October 10, 2024, and was open to invited guests. Interested parties took part in the discussions to help shape the future of urban air mobility.
Key data
Project
VERTIFIED (Vertiport Research Infrastructure For Innovation Exploration and Demonstration)
Participants
Institute of Flight Guidance (Coordinator) Institute of Flight Systems
DLR Facility Flight Experiments
Institute of Communications and Navigation
Institute of Air Transport
National Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems
