TPSAS-NF1676L-14165-DND
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Ryan Chartrand↗
Engineering topics
Ryan Chartrand
Publications and source records attributed to Ryan Chartrand.
Identifying Common Use Cases across Extensible Traffic Management (xTM) for Interactions with Air Traffic Controllers
NASA’s Extensible Traffic Management (xTM) builds on the foundation and the architecture of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) concept and extends it broadly to other domains, such as Advanced / Urban Air Mobility (AAM/UAM) and Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM). These xTM concepts assume the ability to fly in airspace that is authorized to operate solely under xTM services and mostly without any air traffic control (ATC) support. However, they also assume circumstances in which the xTM vehicles would need to operate in conventional ATC-managed airspace, both during nominal and off-nominal scenarios. Due to the vast differences in the xTM vehicle performances and missions, there is a concern that ATC may have difficulty in safely managing the xTM traffic and providing appropriate services to all vehicles, unless a consistent set of roles, procedures, and data exchange requirements are defined across the diverse set of xTM vehicle operations. In this paper, we describe a set of use cases that have been identified in UTM, AAM/UAM, and ETM operations that are related to ATC interactions, and we propose to categorize these use cases across xTM domains based on common trigger events. Organizing the use cases from the perspective of ATC roles per each trigger event is expected to provide the first step in discovering common procedures and data requirements across xTM domains that could help ease the controllers’ cognitive task load and allow them to manage these interactions more safely.
Extensible Traffic Management (xTM)↗
Identifying Common Coordination Procedures across Extensible Traffic Management (xTM) to Integrate xTM Operations into the National Airspace System
New categories of missions and vehicle types, such as drone delivery services, on-demand air taxi, and high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) vehicles are being proposed to operate using a novel, highly automated information exchange infrastructure and a community-based, cooperative traffic management concept. Collectively, these new operations are called Extensible Traffic Management (xTM). As these xTM vehicles become more prevalent, their operations will increasingly overlap with existing conventional aircraft and with each other. In order to seamlessly co-exist with current conventional aircraft operations, new coordination procedures, tools and services will be needed to integrate xTM into the future National Airspace System (NAS). In our prior work, we have identified a set of use cases for xTM interactions with air traffic control (ATC), categorized across different xTM operations based on trigger events. Events consisted of ones such as nominal xTM vehicle transition into the ATC environment or an off-nominal emergency landing situation. In this paper, we have extended the prior work to identify commonalities in the coordination procedures across xTM, as well as differences that are specific to the individual xTM operations. The overall results showed that two types of xTM-ATC interactions were prevalent: 1) xTM vehicles transitioning between xTM and ATC operational environments; 2) xTM vehicles being allowed to continue xTM operations in areas that are normally controlled by ATC. The results also suggested that emergency and rare off-nominal events may need specialized procedures for each vehicle type. The overall results suggest that there is a pathway to define a common method of handling and integrating diverse xTM operations in the future NAS, but there need to be procedures for individualized handling of xTM vehicles in infrequent, safety-critical events.
Extensible Traffic Management (xTM)↗