• 29 Jun 2021 01:13 PM
• 0

NASA Supports Local AAM

NASA announced on May 14 that it had signed agreements with four US states departments of transportation (DOT) and one city to host a series of workshops that will help governments prepare their transport plans to include cargo-carrying drones and passenger-carrying air taxi services: Massachusetts DOT, Minnesota DOT, North Central Texas Council of Governments DOT, Ohio Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of the Ohio DOT and the City of Orlando, Florida. The cooperative activities will take place through next summer, with each including a series of at least four workshops where experts from the localities and NASA’s AAM mission will work on updating local plans and creating new ones that might be needed to enable AAM. The entities will include additional partners drawn from local governments, airport authorities and operators, chambers of commerce, universities, vehicle and subsystem manufacturers, infrastructure providers, workforce development organizations and others.

The workshops will address a wide range of pertinent topics related to AAM — from identifying a common set of terms to use in discussions and planning documents, to evaluating potential criteria that might be used in locating future vertiports. Another major goal for the outcome of these agreements is to develop a “best practice” document around a key topic that other states and municipalities might follow in developing their own plans for integrating AAM into their transportation systems.