The trend for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is growing with prospective air taxis, parcel deliverers, and medical and industrial services. Safe and efficient UAM operation relies on timely communication and reliable data exchange. In this paper, we explore Cooperative Perception (CP) for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), considering the unique communication needs involving high dynamics and a large number of UAS. We propose a hybrid approach combining local broadcast with a central CP service, inspired by centrally managed U-space and broadcast mechanisms from automotive and aviation domains. In a simulation study, we show that our approach significantly enhances the environmental awareness for UAS compared to fully distributed approaches, with an increased communication channel load, which we also evaluate. These findings prompt a discussion on communication strategies for CP in UAM and the potential of a centralized CP service in future research.

翻译：随着未来空中出租车、包裹递送以及医疗与工业服务的发展，城市空中交通（UAM）的趋势日益增长。安全高效的UAM运行依赖于及时的通信与可靠的数据交换。本文针对无人机系统（UAS）的协同感知（CP）展开研究，并考虑了涉及高动态性与大规模UAS的独特通信需求。受集中管理的U-space空域架构以及汽车与航空领域广播机制的启发，我们提出了一种融合本地广播与中心化CP服务的混合方法。通过仿真研究，我们证明相较于完全分布式方法，本方法能显著提升UAS的环境感知能力，同时增加了通信信道负载——该负载亦在本文评估范围内。这些发现引发了关于UAM中CP通信策略的讨论，并为未来研究中中心化CP服务的潜力提供了启示。