# Reinventing Mobility Paradigms: Flying Car Scenarios and Challenges for Urban Mobility
## 3 The Model  
The agent-based model proposed here wants to test some UAM scenarios for the selected case C, described in Section 2.2, in order to provide a preliminary assessment of the flying car potential in an urban context. In particular, only within-city trips have been simulated, which are the most interesting in the urban context. The comparison among scenarios is based on travel time, which is a preliminary, important indicator of how conveniently travelers can move between origin/destination pairs and indirectly of how sustainable flying car scenarios could be in the sense of easiness to move. The hypothesis here is that all the vehicles are electric, which is coherent with the current development of e-mobility, both in terms of new generation vehicles and facilities adopted within cities, i.e., fast charging power stations. Based on the overall features of case C, three main types of interactions have been considered: (_i_) among flying cars; (_ii_) between flying cars and existing ground obstacles; (_iii_) among flying cars and ground cars. As for interactions among flying cars, automation and supporting devices are considered to keep horizontal and vertical separations, right trajectory and altitude. In fact, it has to be expected that flying cars will have a high level of automation for keeping safe distances--in the all three dimensions--in line with similar expectations for the still-in-progress models of automated/autonomous cars. Data exchanged among vehicles include location, direction and speed, which are assumed to be processed by on-board devices in order to provide information useful to avoid collisions or wake turbulence effects. In addition, a control center has been included, which provides information to vehicles. Vertical position may vary with meteorological conditions, then it has been considered that flying cars are suitably equipped to identify and keep a safe vertical position during flight also according to meteorological conditions. For the planned route between a trip origin/destination pair the minimum vertical position has been set suitably greater than the height of the highest building or ground obstacle. Without losing the general nature of the performed experiments, potential prescriptions preventing one from flying below a given height--apart from the minimum height due to building features--when operating over a built-up area or from flying at all over some particular zones (e.g., military areas, government buildings) have not been considered. In fact, the hypothesis has been made that safety and security issues have been solved, as it could be expected in a UAM scenario. It is worthwhile to note that it is not in the aim of this paper to focus on issues concerning rules and prescriptions for security reasons. Only technical issues and safety limits concerning minimum heights for avoiding obstacles have been considered. Interactions between flying cars and existing ground obstacles are relevant during landing/take-off, which have been simulated only along prefixed, safe routes. Potential obstacles are mainly buildings--especially in high-density/high-populated cities where also variable building heights are expected--and electric cables/antennas--particularly for low-level flights during landing/take-off. Interactions among flying cars and ground cars occur during the transition from flying mode to ground mode, i.e., during landing/take-off, which is allowed within the city only at pre-fixed \"transition areas\". Transition areas should be suitably located in the urban context--i.e., in order to both reduce interference with obstacles/ground traffic and minimize disturbances--and then have to be identified where the urban structure is sufficiently dispersed, also by considering the variability of the descent path--e.g., due to meteorological conditions. Reasonably, transition areas are located at no less than the \(d_{min}\) of each other (see below). Dedicated transition roads link transition areas to the ground transport network.