Mobility (of people, goods, services) is an urgent, cross-disciplinary, bipartisan concern that impacts all humans on this planet. As our surface infrastructure continues to devolve (e.g., through overuse, congestion, and disrepair), intermodal Transportation has become a matter of extreme National priority. Recent emphasis is so pervasive that Federal policymakers are mandating widespread change, including the recent "Build Back Better" initiative. Near-term technological pathways towards improving human mobility include connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV's) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s). Longer-term, domain experts are already investigating disruptive, bleeding edge prospects, including extreme advances with High-speed Rail, the Hyperloop, and even "flying car" technologies – formally referred to as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). For such technologies, Modeling & Simulation (M&S) will be essential both to demonstrate baseline technological viability and to achieve long-term sustainability.
The 2022 I/ITSEC edict to ACTT! (Accelerate Change by Transforming Training!) is timely -- to enable humankind to revolutionize innovations that will overcome the varied Mobility challenges we face in the near future. This paper presents a notional examination of planned and ongoing Simulation developments towards realization of AAM on a broader scale. The proposed strategic vision is to urgently “ACTT”: Aeronautical Conceptualization for Tomorrow's Transportation - through the rigorous and integrated application of M&S, and the Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) taxonomy. Our implementation includes: a) Live prototyping, using drones and quadcopters within a large testing enclosure; b) Virtual simulation, by way of a custom-designed, parameterizable "human-in-the-loop" Mixed Reality Flying Car simulator; and c) Constructive modeling, to enable vehicle traffic simulation into the third dimension through emulation of organic system behavior, including particle swarm theory. Critically, the paper concludes with an examination of candidate AAM Use Cases that will both: a) impact near-term human-machine interactions with next-generation mobility vehicles, and b) influence longer-term future urban development and planning.