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NASA NTRS2020

ATD-2 Benefits Mechanism

NASA has been developing and demonstrating a suite of decision support capabilities for integrated arrival, departure, and surface (IADS) operations in a metroplex environment. The effort is being made in three phases, under NASA’s Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) sub-project, through a close partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air carriers, airport, and general aviation community. The Phase 1 Baseline IADS capabilities provide enhanced operational efficiency and predictability of flight operations through data exchange and integration, tactical surface metering, and automated coordination of release time of controlled flights for overhead stream insertion. The Phase 2 Fused IADS capabilities include the fusion of strategic and tactical surface metering, Atlanta Center airspace tactical scheduling, Electronic Flight Data (EFD) integration, Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) Terminal Publication (TTP) prototype, and Mobile App for General Aviation (GA) community. In the Phase 2 field evaluation, strategic surface metering provides advance notice of metering and additional stability to the assigned gate holds. The users of the IADS system in Phases 1 and 2 include the personnel at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) air traffic control tower, American Airlines ramp tower, CLT terminal radar approach control (TRACON), and Washington and Atlanta Center. This document describes the ATD-2 benefits mechanism used to assess the Phases 1 and 2 IADS capabilities and field evaluation conducted at CLT since September 2017. The ATD-2 benefits mechanism mainly consists of surface metering and overhead stream insertion. This document provides detailed calculation methods of major benefit metrics, such as fuel savings, gas emissions savings, and engine runtime reduction, which can be obtained through surface metering, gate hold of Approval Request (APREQ) flights prior to pushback, and the renegotiation of release time while taxiing. As of April 30, 2020, it is estimated that 5,097,173 pounds of fuel savings and 15,699,292 pounds of CO2 emission reduction have been achieved so far, with a reduction of 3,831 hours in total engine runtime. The amount of CO2 savings is estimated to be equivalent to planting 116,739 urban trees. The pre- and post-metering comparison results using FAA’s Aviation System Performance Metrics (ASPM) data have also shown that the surface metering had no negative impact on the on-time arrival performance of both outbound and inbound flights at CLT.

ATD-2↗

NASA NTRS2016

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Human-in-the-Loop Controller and Pilot Acceptability Study: Collision Avoidance, Self-Separation, and Alerting Times (CASSAT)

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been mandated by the Congressional funding bill of 2012 to open the National Airspace System (NAS) to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). With the growing use of unmanned systems, NASA has established a multi-center "UAS Integration in the NAS" Project, in collaboration with the FAA and industry, and is guiding its research efforts to look at and examine crucial safety concerns regarding the integration of UAS into the NAS. Key research efforts are addressing requirements for detect-and-avoid (DAA), self-separation (SS), and collision avoidance (CA) technologies. In one of a series of human-in-the-loop experiments, NASA Langley Research Center set up a study known as Collision Avoidance, Self-Separation, and Alerting Times (CASSAT). The first phase assessed active air traffic controller interactions with DAA systems and the second phase examined reactions to the DAA system and displays by UAS Pilots at a simulated ground control station (GCS). Analyses of the test results from Phase I and Phase II are presented in this paper. Results from the CASSAT study and previous human-in-the-loop experiments will play a crucial role in the FAA's establishment of rules, regulations, and procedures to safely, efficiently, and effectively integrate UAS into the NAS.

Comstock, James R., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Characteristics of a Well Clear Definition and Alerting Criteria for Encounters Between UAS and Manned Aircraft in Class E Airspace

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) will be required to equip with a detect-and-avoid (DAA) system in order to satisfy the federal aviation regulations to remain well clear of other aircraft. For a DAA system to satisfy the requirement to stay well clear of other airborne traffic, a quantitative definition of well clear needs to be defined and evaluated. This study investigates the implications of UAS using proposed well clear definitions as a separation standard for conducting operations in the National Airspace System (NAS). The first analysis considers three well clear definitions and presents the relative state conditions of intruder aircraft as they encroach upon the well clear boundary. The second analysis focuses on the definition of the alerting criteria needed to inform the UAS operator of a potential loss of well clear. All analyses are conducted in a NAS-wide fast-time simulation environment using UAS aircraft models, proposed UAS missions, and historical air defense radar data to populate the background traffic operating under visual flight rules. The results presented in this study inform the safety case, requirements development, and the operational environment for DAA minimum operational performance standards.

Safety↗

NASA NTRS2021

Simulation and Modeling Concepts for Secure Airspace Operations

This paper examines cyber security vulnerabilities of Urban Air Mobility operations. With the expected advent of new entrants including Unmanned Aerial Systems, Commercial Launch Vehicles and Urban Air Mobility aircraft, the future United States National Airspace System will have to evolve to include their operations along with the current commercial, general aviation and military operations. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration are working together to provide a vision for aviation operations in the future—2045 and beyond. Their National Airspace System Horizons initiative seeks to provide stakeholders a list of operational scenarios and technologies, concepts and strategies needed for supporting that vision. They have identified cybersecurity as one of the seven strategic interest areas for realizing this vision. Consequently, NASA is studying cyber resiliency for secure airspace operations. While there are many pathways to attack a cyber physical system such as Urban Air Mobility, their effect is expressed in modification or corruption of data/information used for controlling vehicles and making operational decisions. The paper describes cybersecurity technologies of Encryption, Blockchain, Virtual Information Fabric Infrastructure, Trusted Platform Module and Anomaly Detection for protecting the data, and the cyber resiliency of the current and future air traffic management system.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS2021

Simulation and Modeling Concepts for Secure Airspace Operations

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS2022

PAAV Concept Document

The Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) Concept Document, version 1.0, lays out the key challenges and potential solutions for the use of uncrewed aircraft (UA) technology for future regional air cargo operations. The challenges and solutions described in this document were informed by communications with the UA industry community (e.g., RTCA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and regional air cargo business operators), as well as the PAAV team’s research activities during the last two years including four tabletop exercises, a human-in-the-loop simulation study, a numerical simulation study, a functional allocation study, and flight data analysis (Appendix A). This document first describes the expected operational context of PAAV (Section 2), such as the flight mission, baseline UAS components, nominal operations, m:N operations (i.e., "m" remote pilots per "N" aircraft), and off-nominal operations. This context sets the scope for the PAAV concept development work. PAAV concept development assumes that UA operations will be increasingly autonomous. Thus, near- and far-term assumptions are defined (Section 3). PAAV identified seven key challenges for UA operations (Section 4): - Flight route planning - Separation and flow management - Traffic pattern integration - Contingency management - Taxi, takeoff, and landing - m:N operations - Communications operations The following 13 potential solutions to these challenges are then described (Section 5): - Scalable communications architecture - Data link - Designated UAS corridors - Crew planning for m:N operations - Flight route optimization - Traffic load-level control - Trajectory solutions with data link - Automated hazard avoidance for m:N operations - Traffic pattern integration (TPI) tool - Standard lost command and control (C2) link (LC2L) procedures - Automated hazard avoidance under LC2L - Auto-taxi, auto-takeoff, and auto-land - Ground control station (GCS) user interface for m:N operations The document attempts to link each of these solutions to one or more of the challenge areas. Novel solutions involving numerous automation technologies are needed to mitigate traffic and airspace management challenges, especially for realizing m:N operations and ensuring safety under LC2L conditions. The purpose of this document is to help understand alternatives and tradeoffs among potential solutions and provide a foundation for a cohesive PAAV concept that will be described and refined in subsequent concept versions.

Unmanned aircraft, uncrewed aircraft, regional air↗

NASA NTRS1993

The gust-front detection and wind-shift algorithms for the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar system

The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system was primarily designed to address the operational needs of pilots in the avoidance of low-altitude wind shears upon takeoff and landing at airports. One of the primary methods of wind-shear detection for the TDWR system is the gust-front detection algorithm. The algorithm is designed to detect gust fronts that produce a wind-shear hazard and/or sustained wind shifts. It serves the hazard warning function by providing an estimate of the wind-speed gain for aircraft penetrating the gust front. The gust-front detection and wind-shift algorithms together serve a planning function by providing forecasted gust-front locations and estimates of the horizontal wind vector behind the front, respectively. This information is used by air traffic managers to determine arrival and departure runway configurations and aircraft movements to minimize the impact of wind shifts on airport capacity. This paper describes the gust-front detection and wind-shift algorithms to be fielded in the initial TDWR systems. Results of a quantitative performance evaluation using Doppler radar data collected during TDWR operational demonstrations at the Denver, Kansas City, and Orlando airports are presented. The algorithms were found to be operationally useful by the FAA airport controllers and supervisors.

Hermes, Laurie G.↗

NASA NTRS2014

A Flight Research Overview of WSPR, a Pilot Project for Sonic Boom Community Response

In support of the ongoing effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to bring supersonic commercial travel to the public, the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center and the NASA Langley Research Center, in cooperation with other industry organizations, conducted a flight research experiment to identify the methods, tools, and best practices for a large-scale quiet (or low) sonic boom community human response test. The name of the effort was Waveforms and Sonic boom Perception and Response (WSPR). Such tests will be applied to building a dataset that governing agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization will use to establish regulations for acceptable sound levels of overland sonic booms. The WSPR test was the first such effort that studied responses to non-traditional low sonic booms while the subject persons were in their own homes and performing daily activities.The WSPR test was a NASA collaborative effort with several industry partners, in response to a NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate Research Opportunities in Aeronautics. The primary contractor was Wyle (El Segundo, California). Other partners included Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (Savannah, Georgia); Pennsylvania State University (University Park, Pennsylvania); Tetra Tech, Inc. (Pasadena, California); and Fidell Associates, Inc. (Woodland Hills, California).A major objective of the effort included exposing a community to the sonic boom magnitudes and occurrences that would be expected to occur in high-air traffic regions having a network of supersonic commercial aircraft in place. Low-level sonic booms designed to simulate those produced by the next generation of commercial supersonic aircraft were generated over a small residential community. The sonic boom footprint was recorded with an autonomous wireless microphone array that spanned the entire community. Human response data were collected using multiple survey methods. The research focused on essential elements of community response testing including subject recruitment, survey methods, instrumentation systems, flight planning and operations, and data analysis methods.This paper focuses on the NASA role in the logistics and operations of the effort, including human response subject recruitment, the operational processes involved in implementing the surveys throughout the community, instrumentation systems, logistics, flight planning, and flight operations. Findings discussed in this paper include critical lessons learned in all of the above-mentioned areas, as well as flight operations results. Analysis of the accuracy and repeatability of planning and executing the unique aircraft maneuver used to generate low sonic booms concluded that the sonic booms had overpressures within 0.15 lbft2 of the planned values for 76 percent of the attempts. Similarly, 90 percent of the attempts to generate low sonic booms within the community were successful.

community response↗

NASA NTRS2014

Automated Discovery of Flight Track Anomalies

As new technologies are developed to handle the complexities of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), it is increasingly important to address both current and future safety concerns along with the operational, environmental, and efficiency issues within the National Airspace System (NAS). In recent years, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) safety offices have been researching ways to utilize the many safety databases maintained by the FAA, such as those involving flight recorders, radar tracks, weather, and many other high- volume sensors, in order to monitor this unique and complex system. Although a number of current technologies do monitor the frequency of known safety risks in the NAS, very few methods currently exist that are capable of analyzing large data repositories with the purpose of discovering new and previously unmonitored safety risks. While monitoring the frequency of known events in the NAS enables mitigation of already identified problems, a more proactive approach of finding unidentified issues still needs to be addressed. This is especially important in the proactive identification of new, emergent safety issues that may result from the planned introduction of advanced NextGen air traffic management technologies and procedures. Development of an automated tool that continuously evaluates the NAS to discover both events exhibiting flight characteristics indicative of safety-related concerns as well as operational anomalies will heighten the awareness of such situations in the aviation community and serve to increase the overall safety of the NAS. This paper discusses the extension of previous anomaly detection work to identify operationally significant flights within the highly complex airspace encompassing the New York area of operations, focusing on the major airports of Newark International (EWR), LaGuardia International (LGA), and John F. Kennedy International (JFK). In addition, flight traffic in the vicinity of Denver International (DEN) airport/airspace is also investigated to evaluate the impact on operations due to variances in seasonal weather and airport elevation. From our previous research, subject matter experts determined that some of the identified anomalies were significant, but could not reach conclusive findings without additional supportive data. To advance this research further, causal examination using domain experts is continued along with the integration of air traffic control (ATC) voice data to shed much needed insight into resolving which flight characteristic(s) may be impacting an aircraft's unusual profile. Once a flight characteristic is identified, it could be included in a list of potential safety precursors. This paper also describes a process that has been developed and implemented to automatically identify and produce daily reports on flights of interest from the previous day.

Matthews, Bryan↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

High-Altitude ADS-B/GPS LPV Flight Tests on a NASA ER-2 Research Airplane

The research presented in this paper describes the conceptual design of a system architecture that integrates Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and Global Positioning System (GPS) Localizer Performance Vertical (LPV) guidance technology onto a unique high-altitude research airplane: a United States Air Force (USAF) / Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, Maryland) Aeronautics U-2S airplane. The design features modern display capabilities to provide air-to-air surveillance and precision navigation, to adhere to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification standards for operations in upper Class E airspace. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) variant of the U-2S, now called the Earth Resources (ER-2) airplane, remains unrivaled in the art of sustained high-altitude flight for scientific expeditions. Capable of routinely cruising above flight level (FL) 650 that had been considered, at inception, the domain of only the most elite experimental research aircraft types. Nicknamed the Dragon Lady, this U-2S research testbed is still one of the most advanced aircraft in the world. The exceptional military design of the vehicle, security guidelines, and the performance envelope of the ER-2 posed unique challenges to the integration of modern civilian avionics. ADS-B epitomizes the next generation of surveillance technology, incorporating both air and ground aspects. ADS-B provides air traffic control (ATC) with a more accurate picture of the three-dimensional positioning of aircraft in various phases of flight, including en route, terminal, approach, and ground operations. The airborne surveillance system broadcasts its identification, position, altitude, velocity, and other information. GPS LPV represents a significant advancement in aviation technology, emphasizing the pivotal role that GPS and Performance-Based Navigation concepts will play in the foreseeable future. This technology represents a shift from sensor-based navigation to performance-based navigation, allowing for more flexible and efficient use of airspace. This research described herein is structured as follows: Section II, “Systems Background,” provides a systems background and description of an ADS-B and GPS LPV system equipped on the high-altitude ER-2 research airplane to satisfy the FAA airworthiness requirements for high-altitude flight operations. Section III, “Flight Test System,” describes the flight-test airplane systems. Section IV, “Analysis of GPS SBAS, Safety, and Ground Tests,” provides an overview of the GPS Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) and an analysis of the GPS LPV metrics, safety, and ground tests. Section V, “High-Altitude Flight Tests,” describes the high-altitude flight tests, including 3 flight-test results, analysis, human factors, and lessons learned. Section VI, the conclusion, draws insights from the lessons learned, discusses the design challenges associated with ADS-B and GPS LPV, and showcases the paramount significance of these pivotal technologies in aircraft surveillance and navigation.

Ricardo A. Arteaga↗

NASA NTRS2011

The Proposed Use of Unmanned Aerial System Surrogate Research Aircraft for National Airspace System Integration Research

Research is needed to determine what procedures, aircraft sensors and other systems will be required to allow Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to safely operate with manned aircraft in the National Airspace System (NAS). This paper explores the use of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Surrogate research aircraft to serve as platforms for UAS systems research, development, and flight testing. These aircraft would be manned with safety pilots and researchers that would allow for flight operations almost anywhere in the NAS without the need for a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Certificate of Authorization (COA). With pilot override capability, these UAS Surrogate aircraft would be controlled from ground stations like true UAS s. It would be possible to file and fly these UAS Surrogate aircraft in the NAS with normal traffic and they would be better platforms for real world UAS research and development over existing vehicles flying in restricted ranges or other sterilized airspace. These UAS surrogate aircraft could be outfitted with research systems as required such as computers, state sensors, video recording, data acquisition, data link, telemetry, instrumentation, and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). These surrogate aircraft could also be linked to onboard or ground based simulation facilities to further extend UAS research capabilities. Potential areas for UAS Surrogate research include the development, flight test and evaluation of sensors to aide in the process of air traffic "see-and-avoid". These and other sensors could be evaluated in real-time and compared with onboard human evaluation pilots. This paper examines the feasibility of using UAS Surrogate research aircraft as test platforms for a variety of UAS related research.

Howell, Charles T., III↗

NASA NTRS2006

Software for Simulating Air Traffic

Future Air Traffic Management Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) is a system of software for performing computational simulations for evaluating advanced concepts of advanced air-traffic management. FACET includes a program that generates a graphical user interface plus programs and databases that implement computational models of weather, airspace, airports, navigation aids, aircraft performance, and aircraft trajectories. Examples of concepts studied by use of FACET include aircraft self-separation for free flight; prediction of air-traffic-controller workload; decision support for direct routing; integration of spacecraft-launch operations into the U.S. national airspace system; and traffic- flow-management using rerouting, metering, and ground delays. Aircraft can be modeled as flying along either flight-plan routes or great-circle routes as they climb, cruise, and descend according to their individual performance models. The FACET software is modular and is written in the Java and C programming languages. The architecture of FACET strikes a balance between flexibility and fidelity; as a consequence, FACET can be used to model systemwide airspace operations over the contiguous U.S., involving as many as 10,000 aircraft, all on a single desktop or laptop computer running any of a variety of operating systems. Two notable applications of FACET include: (1) reroute conformance monitoring algorithms that have been implemented in one of the Federal Aviation Administration s nationally deployed, real-time, operational systems; and (2) the licensing and integration of FACET with the commercially available Flight Explorer, which is an Internet- based, real-time flight-tracking system.

Sridhar, Banavar↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Simulation and Modeling Concepts for Secure Airspace Operations

With the expected advent of new entrants including Unmanned Aerial Systems, Commercial Launch Vehicles and Urban Air Mobility aircraft, the future United States National Airspace System will have to evolve to include their operations along with the current commercial, general aviation and military operations. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration are working together to provide a vision for aviation operations in the future—2045 and beyond. Their National Airspace System Horizons initiative seeks to provide stakeholders a list of operational scenarios and technologies, concepts and strategies needed for supporting that vision. They have identified cybersecurity as one of the seven strategic interest areas for realizing this vision. Consequently, NASA is studying cyber resiliency for secure airspace operations. This paper examines cyber security vulnerabilities of Urban Air Mobility operations. While there are many pathways to attack a cyber physical system such as Urban Air Mobility, their effect is expressed in modification or corruption of data/information used for controlling vehicles and making operational decisions. The paper describes cybersecurity technologies of Encryption, Blockchain, Virtual Information Fabric Infrastructure, Trusted Platform Module and Anomaly Detection for protecting the data, thus, improving the cyber resiliency of the current and future air traffic management system.

Cybersecurity↗

NASA NTRS1990

Automatic detection of low altitude wind shear due to gust fronts in the terminal Doppler weather radar operational demonstration

A gust front is the leading edge of the cold air outflow from a thunderstorm. Wind shears and turbulence along the gust front may produce potentially hazardous conditions for an aircraft on takeoff or landing such that runway operations are significantly impacted. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has therefore determined that the detection of gust fronts in the terminal environment be an integral part of the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system. Detection of these shears by the Gust Front Algorithm permits the generation of warnings that can be issued to pilots on approach and departure. In addition to the detection capability, the algorithm provides an estimate of the wind speed and direction following the gust front (termed wind shift) and the forecasted location of the gust front up to 20 minutes before it impacts terminal operations. This has shown utility as a runway management tool, alerting runway supervisors to approaching wind shifts and the possible need to change runway configurations. The formation and characteristics of gust fronts and their signatures in Doppler radar data are discussed. A brief description of the algorithm and its products for use by Air Traffic Control (ATC), along with an assessment of the algorithm's performance during the 1988 Operational Test and Evaluation, is presented.

Klingle-Wilson, Diana↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Demand Capacity Balancing at Vertiports for Initial Strategic Conflict Management of Urban Air Mobility Operations

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a new transportation concept that enables highly automated, cooperative, passenger or cargo-carrying air transportation services in and around urban areas. To achieve the high level of operational density and complexity desired by the UAM community, an airspace system that allows UAM operators to readily access and operate safely and efficiently in the airspace is needed. This airspace system will require air traffic management designed to reduce the risk of conflicts and loss of separation between UAM flights. In general, strategic conflict management is considered as the first layer of conflict management for safe flight operations to condition the traffic to reduce the need for airborne separation provision, the second layer of conflict management. Demand Capacity Balancing (DCB) is one of the concept components to achieve strategic conflict management. DCB strategically evaluates traffic demand and resource capacities to allow UAM operators to determine when, where and how they operate, while mitigating conflicting needs for airspace and vertiport capacity. DCB can be applied whenever UAM demand exceeds the capacity in airspace or at vertiports. As the UAM ecosystem evolves with advanced technologies and matured operational procedures, more complicated conflict management will likely be needed. In the current UAM ‘Concept of Operation (ConOps) 1.0’ operational stage defined by FAA, however, it will be meaningful to explore the demand capacity balancing at vertiports only, as an initial strategic conflict management approach for UAM operations because vertiport capacity seems to be a bottleneck of UAM traffic. For this research, we developed a demand-capacity imbalance detection and resolution service for UAM. This DCB service identifies the demand from operators and compares the demand to a given capacity at the shared resources (i.e., vertiports) over the upcoming time horizon which is divided into time bins having a constant interval. When a new flight plan is submitted, the algorithm embedded in the DCB service checks the available time bins based on the desired departure time and estimated arrival time at origin and destination vertiports, respectively. If the time bins for the originally desired times are already occupied by other flights (i.e., demand is at or above capacity), the algorithm finds the next available time bins for takeoff and landing and shifts the conflicting departure time to the earliest time that satisfies the capacity constraints at both origin and destination vertiports. The details of the algorithm will be described in the final manuscript. Figure 1 shows that the proposed DCB algorithm works well for a sample traffic scenario. In this example, a total of 144 flights, split between two operators, are planned over 2 hours, traveling 10 routes between five vertiports. In the heatmaps, the horizontal axis shows 12 time bins where each bin represents a 12-minute interval, and the vertical axis shows five vertiports. The number in each cell shows the number of operations, counting both departures and arrivals, at a specific vertiport in each time bin. For the given capacity of 2 operations/vertiport/bin, Figure 1 shows that the original demand sometimes exceeds the capacity, but the modified demand is reduced to the given capacity after resolving demand-capacity imbalances. When UAM flights are operated, it is expected that many practical issues would arise in the federated system architecture with multiple operators. UAM operators may experience a time synchronization issue due to communication delay between operator and vehicle. UAM vehicles would fly at different flight speeds, depending on vehicle models. Actual departure and arrival times can have large variations, compared to the schedule. The lead time from flight plan submission to desired departure time can vary by service type (e.g., regular shuttle service vs. on-demand service). Using the proposed DCB algorithm, we also investigated how the actual flight schedule and DCB performance are affected by these uncertainties such as unsynchronized times between operators, flight speed differences, lead time differences, and departure time errors. The final manuscript will include the background of this research work, the description of the DCB algorithm and its use cases with traffic scenarios. It will also provide the analytical results about the impact of various uncertainties that can occur in actual UAM operations on the DCB at vertiports, in terms of demand distribution changes, number of simultaneous operations, and delay propagation.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS2017

Predicting the Operational Acceptability of Route Advisories

NASA envisions a future Air Traffic Management system that allows safe, efficient growth in global operations, enabled by increasing levels of automation and autonomy. In a safety-critical system, the introduction of increasing automation and autonomy has to be done in stages, making human-system integrated concepts critical in the foreseeable future. One example where this is relevant is for tools that generate more efficient flight routings or reroute advisories. If these routes are not operationally acceptable, they will be rejected by human operators, and the associated benefits will not be realized. Operational acceptance is therefore required to enable the increased efficiency and reduced workload benefits associated with these tools. In this paper, the authors develop a predictor of operational acceptability for reroute advisories. Such a capability has applications in tools that identify more efficient routings around weather and congestion and that better meet airline preferences. The capability is based on applying data mining techniques to flight plan amendment data reported by the Federal Aviation Administration and data on requested reroutes collected from a field trial of the NASA developed Dynamic Weather Routes tool, which advised efficient route changes to American Airlines dispatchers in 2014. 10-Fold cross validation was used for feature, model and parameter selection, while nested cross validation was used to validate the model. The model performed well in predicting controller acceptance or rejection of a route change as indicated by chosen performance metrics. Features identified as relevant to controller acceptance included the historical usage of the advised route, the location of the maneuver start point relative to the boundaries of the airspace sector containing the maneuver start (the maneuver start sector), the reroute deviation from the original flight plan, and the demand level in the maneuver start sector. A random forest with forty trees was the best performing of the five models evaluated in this paper.

route advisories↗

NASA NTRS2017

Predicting the Operational Acceptability of Route Advisories

operational acceptability↗

NASA NTRS2020

UAM Vision Concept of Operations (ConOps) UAM Maturity Level (UML) 4

This Vision ConOps is intended as a foundation to engage members of the UAM community and provide a consensus on the future vision of UAM operations. It provides a concept for more detailed discussion and a basis for the exploration of ideas using a common framework to inform the continued development and integration of UAM as part of the broader transportation system. Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) encompasses a range of innovative aviation technologies (small drones, electric aircraft, automated air traffic management, etc.) that are transforming aviation’s role in everyday life, including the movement of goods and people. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) represents one of the most exciting and complex AAM concepts with highly automated aircraft, providing commercial services to the public over densely populated cities. This concept has generated tremendous interest and industry investment. UAM envisages a future in which advanced technologies and new operational procedures enable practical, cost-effective air travel as an integral mode of transportation in metropolitan areas. It represents one of the most exciting and complex AAM concepts with highly automated aircraft providing commercial services to the public over densely populated cities. For this reason, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected UAM as the initial goal of its AAM efforts and the focus of this Vision Concept of Operations (ConOps) document. UAM Community Vision ConOps: This Vision ConOps effort was led by experts from NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Deloitte’s Ecosystem Advisory Group (a cohort of advisers with aviation, aerospace, and regulatory expertise). To develop this Vision ConOps, NASA, FAA, and Deloitte built upon the current body of aeronautical research and consulted with more than 100 stakeholder organizations. This UAM community includes entities ranging from legacy aviation leaders to innovators and new market entrants. Stakeholders consulted included the federal government, state and local government, aerospace original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), local transportation organizations, prospective UAM operators, academia, industry standards-setting bodies, airports, service suppliers, and others (as described in Appendix G). This input was captured through the following methods: • A series of more than two dozen interviews with industry experts, federal regulators, state and local governments, and industry trade groups provided insight into the challenges of UAM integration into the National Airspace System (NAS), as well as technology developments and a variety of perspectives as to how UAM systems will integrate. • A series of two-day community workshops enabling active, detailed engagement of nearly 100 industry, academic, federal, and state stakeholder individuals. These workshops, hosted by NASA and Deloitte, explored UAM concepts in detail, and stakeholders were invited to collaboratively analyze and propose solutions to some of the greatest conceptual challenges behind UAM at an intermediate state. • A review of more than 160 sources of UAM literature from across government, industry, and academia, which are listed in Appendix H. • The public sharing of workshop input and document drafts for review and input across the UAM community. Feedback in the form of more than 1,000 comments and inputs on the document was received from industry groups, individual companies, academia, and government (federal, state, and local), among others. Although effort was made to incorporate inputs from across the UAM stakeholder group, not all comments could ultimately be incorporated in this version. The team resolved conflicting comments or ideas while maintaining consistency with the known direction of regulators and ensuring the document was coherent and consistent. It is recognized that this is a rapidly evolving area and that concepts will likely change over time; as such, this Vision ConOps is a living document and is expected to evolve as concepts mature. The ConOps does, however, provide a vision of UAM concepts and solutions based on the broad insights from across the UAM stakeholder community at the time of its publication and is intended to serve as a UAM North Star for continued research and development of UAM. As a broad Vision ConOps, is not a detailed engineering document; rather, it focuses primarily on outlining a broad, high-level vision across all aspects of a UAM transportation system.

Urban Air Mobility↗