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NASA NTRS2008

Advanced Air Transportation Technologies Project, Final Document Collection

This CD ROM contains a compilation of the final documents of the Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AAIT) project, which was an eight-year (1996 to 2004), $400M project managed by the Airspace Systems Program office, which was part of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. AAIT focused on developing advanced automation tools and air traffic management concepts that would help improve the efficiency of the National Airspace System, while maintaining or enhancing safety. The documents contained in the CD are final reports on AAIT tasks that serve to document the project's accomplishments over its eight-year term. Documents include information on: Advanced Air Transportation Technologies, Autonomous Operations Planner, Collaborative Arrival Planner, Distributed Air/Ground Traffic Management Concept Elements 5, 6, & 11, Direct-To, Direct-To Technology Transfer, Expedite Departure Path, En Route Data Exchange, Final Approach Spacing Tool - (Active and Passive), Multi-Center Traffic Management Advisor, Multi Center Traffic Management Advisor Technology Transfer, Surface Movement Advisor, Surface Management System, Surface Management System Technology Transfer and Traffic Flow Management Research & Development.

Mogford, Richard H.↗

NASA NTRS2005

NASA and The Semantic Web

We provide an overview of several ongoing NASA endeavors based on concepts, systems, and technology from the Semantic Web arena. Indeed NASA has been one of the early adopters of Semantic Web Technology and we describe ongoing and completed R&D efforts for several applications ranging from collaborative systems to airspace information management to enterprise search to scientific information gathering and discovery systems at NASA.

Ashish, Naveen↗

NASA NTRS2011

Flexible Airspace Management (FAM) Research 2010 Human-in-the-Loop Simulation

A human-in-the-Ioop (HITL) simulation was conducted to assess potential user and system benefits of Flexible Airspace Management (FAM) concept, as well as designing role definitions, procedures, and tools to support the FAM operations in the mid-term High Altitude Airspace (HAA) environment. The study evaluated the benefits and feasibility of flexible airspace reconfiguration in response to traffic overload caused by weather deviations, and compared them to those in a baseline condition without the airspace reconfiguration. The test airspace consisted of either four sectors in one Area of Specialization or seven sectors across two Areas. The test airspace was assumed to be at or above FL340 and fully equipped Vvith data communications (Data Comm). Other assumptions were consistent with those of the HAA concept. Overall, results showed that FAM operations with multiple Traffic Management Coordinators, Area Supervisors, and controllers worked remarkably well. The results showed both user and system benefits, some of which include the increased throughput, decreased flight distance, more manageable sector loads, and better utilized airspace. Also, the roles, procedures, airspace designs, and tools were all very well received. Airspace configuration options that resulted from a combination of algorithm-generated airspace configurations with manual modifications were well acceptec and posed little difficuIty and/or workload during airspace reconfiguration process. The results suggest a positive impact of FAM operations in HAA. Further investigation would be needed to evaluate if the benefits and feasibility would extend in either non-HAA or mixed equipage environment.

Lee, Paul U.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Alternative Architectures for Distributed Cooperative Problem-Solving in the National Airspace System

The air traffic management system in the United States is an example of a distributed problem solving system. It has elements of both cooperative and competitive problem-solving. This system includes complex organizations such as Airline Operations Centers (AOCs), the FAA Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center (ATCSCC), and traffic management units (TMUs) at enroute centers and TRACONs, all of which have a major focus on strategic decision-making. It also includes individuals concerned more with tactical decisions (such as air traffic controllers and pilots). The architecture for this system has evolved over time to rely heavily on the distribution of tasks and control authority in order to keep cognitive complexity manageable for any one individual operator, and to provide redundancy (both human and technological) to serve as a safety net to catch the slips or mistakes that any one person or entity might make. Currently, major changes are being considered for this architecture, especially with respect to the locus of control, in an effort to improve efficiency and safety. This paper uses a series of case studies to help evaluate some of these changes from the perspective of system complexity, and to point out possible alternative approaches that might be taken to improve system performance. The paper illustrates the need to maintain a clear understanding of what is required to assure a high level of performance when alternative system architectures and decompositions are developed.

Smith, Phillip J.↗

NASA NTRS1998

An Operational Concept for Flying FMS Trajectories in Center and TRACON Airspace

Current Flight Management Systems (FMS) do a good job of constructing and flying an optimal trajectory for a single aircraft. Unfortunately, flight crews are often unable to fly these FMS routes during arrivals at busy airports. The Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) has been designed to aid Center and TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control) controllers in assigning runways, sequencing and vectoring all classes of aircraft. CTAS bases its advisories on trajectory predictions for arriving aircraft using algorithms very similar to those in airborne FMS systems. This paper presents near and far term operational concepts for how a ground ATM (air traffic management) automation system like CTAS could work more effectively with the airborne automation in FMS equipped aircraft. The concepts for a more compatible air-ground system include: 1) a common route databases for both CTAS and FMS; 2) datalink to downlink information on aircraft weight, final approach speed and trajectory intent and to uplink wind information; 3) new FMS functions to allow flight crews to easily update their FMS trajectory to match the trajectory suggested by the ground automation with voice clearances, and 4) in the far term, datalink to downlink user preferred trajectories and to uplink trajectory clearances in the terminal area. The paper analyses some of the human factors issues that may result in allowing aircraft to fly FMS routes during enroute descent and in the terminal area. A series of linked human in the loop flight deck and air traffic control simulations and a field test with the NASA 757 are being conducted at NASA's Ames and Langley Research Centers to address these issues and to evaluate the operational feasibility of these approaches to more efficient flight and increased airport throughput.

Palmer, Everett↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The In-time Aviation Safety Management System Concept for Upper Class E Airspace

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Kyle K Ellis↗

NASA NTRS2004

Air System Information Management

I flew to Washington last week, a trip rich in distributed information management. Buying tickets, at the gate, in flight, landing and at the baggage claim, myriad messages about my reservation, the weather, our flight plans, gates, bags and so forth flew among a variety of travel agency, airline and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) computers and personnel. By and large, each kind of information ran on a particular application, often specialized to own data formats and communications network. I went to Washington to attend an FAA meeting on System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) for the National Airspace System (NAS) (http://www.nasarchitecture.faa.gov/Tutorials/NAS101.cfm). NAS (and its information infrastructure, SWIM) is an attempt to bring greater regularity, efficiency and uniformity to the collection of stovepipe applications now used to manage air traffic. Current systems hold information about flight plans, flight trajectories, weather, air turbulence, current and forecast weather, radar summaries, hazardous condition warnings, airport and airspace capacity constraints, temporary flight restrictions, and so forth. Information moving among these stovepipe systems is usually mediated by people (for example, air traffic controllers) or single-purpose applications. People, whose intelligence is critical for difficult tasks and unusual circumstances, are not as efficient as computers for tasks that can be automated. Better information sharing can lead to higher system capacity, more efficient utilization and safer operations. Better information sharing through greater automation is possible though not necessarily easy.

Filman, Robert E.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An In-time Aviation Safety Management System Concept of Operations and Modernization of the National Airspace System

The National Airspace System (NAS) is growing in complexity of aircraft, missions, and operations. In response, many organizations have published papers and concepts of operations (ConOps) for new and enhanced safety systems. The National Academies’ vision for an In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) is integral to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) modernization efforts. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) System-Wide Safety (SWS) project is conducting safety research, exploring solutions, and defining the safety needs of future missions, such as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and autonomous aircraft operating in a more connected, flexible, and dynamic airspace. IASMS enables and provides a path for bringing FAA’s operational vision to fruition through increasingly automated safety systems that integrate services, functions, and capabilities (SFCs). These SFCs provide the necessary responsiveness to monitor, assess, and mitigate known hazards and emergent risks. This paper describes how safety in today’s air transportation system will need to evolve, identifies key points regarding in-time safety, and explores the criticality of IASMS in the future NAS.

Airspace↗

NASA NTRS2013

Control of Future Air Traffic Systems via Complexity Bound Management

The complexity of the present system for managing air traffic has led to "discreteness" in approaches to creating new concepts: new concepts are created as point designs, based on experience, expertise, and creativity of the proposer. Discrete point designs may be highly successful but they are difficult to substantiate in the face of equally strong substantiation of competing concepts, as well as the state of the art in concept evaluation via simulations. Hybrid concepts may present a compromise - the golden middle. Yet a hybrid of sometimes in principle incompatible concepts forms another point design that faces the challenge of substantiation and validation. We are faced with the need to re-design the air transportation system ab initio. This is a daunting task, especially considering the problem of transitioning from the present system to any fundamentally new system. However, design from scratch is also an opportunity to reconsider approaches to new concept development. In this position paper we propose an approach, Optimized Parametric Functional Design, for systematic development of concepts for management and control of airspace systems, based on optimization formulations in terms of required system functions and states. This reasoning framework, realizable in the context of ab initio system design, offers an approach to deriving substantiated airspace management and control concepts. With growing computational power, we hope that the approach will also yield a methodology for actual dynamic control of airspace

Alexandrov, Natalia↗

NASA NTRS2019

Management by Trajectory: Improving Predictability for Airspace Operations

In the present-day National Airspace System, the air traffic management system attempts to predict the trajectory for each flight based on the flight plan and scheduled or controlled departure time. However, gaps in trajectory data and models, coupled with tactical control actions that are not communicated to automation systems or other stakeholders, lead to trajectory predictions that are less accurate than they could be. This affects traffic flow management performance. Management by Trajectory (MBT) is a NASA concept for air traffic management in which every flight operates in accordance with a 4D trajectory that is negotiated between the airspace user and the FAA to account for the airspace user’s goals while complying with NAS constraints. The primary benefit of MBT is an improvement in system performance due to increased trajectory predictability and stability, which result from managing traffic in all four dimensions (2D route, vertical, and time), ensuring that changes to the flight’s trajectory are incorporated into the assigned trajectory, and utilizing improved time or arrival control standards. Importantly, the performance improvements support increasing efficiency without increasing collision risk. This paper provides an overview of MBT and describes fast-time simulation results evaluating the safety, performance, and efficiency effects of MBT.

Fernandes, Alicia B.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An in-Time Aviation Safety Management System Concept of Operations and Modernization of the National Airspace System

IASMS↗

NASA NTRS2015

Safety Related Considerations in Autonomy

In this talk I will describe NASA strategy and research efforts to provide safety assurance for increasingly autonomous systems used in aviation. In the near future, autonomy will play an important role in civil aviation, and its applications will range from vehicles and platforms (UAVs, transport-class, including supersonic to hypersonic, aircraft) to airspace operations, or health management systems. This infusion of autonomy is driven by a need for optimizing airspace operations to accommodate increasing traffic density (e.g., adaptive trajectory-based operations, autonomous tugs, close parallel runways, and dynamic separation assurance), reducing operation costs to ensure that US operators can compete with emergent countries, and enabling new business models (e.g., fire fighting, UAS-based package delivery and precise aerial photography). In essence virtually every component of the National Airspace System will become increasingly autonomous. Yet we need to do so in a safe manner and have techniques and processes in place to ensure the safety of the public. This talk describes NASA plans to address this problem

Air Traffic Management↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Human Interfaces and Management of Information (HIMI) Challenges for “In-time” Aviation Safety Management Systems (IASMS)

The envisioned transformation of the National Airspace System to integrate an In-time Aviation Safety Management System(IASMS)to assure safety in Advanced Air Mobility(AAM)brings unprecedented challenges to the design of human interfaces and management of safety information. Safety in design and operational safety assurance are critical factors for how humans will interact with increasingly autonomous systems. The IASMS Concept of Operations builds from traditional commercial operator safety management and scales in complexity to AAM. The transformative changes in future aviation systems pose potential new critical safety risks with novel types of aircraft and other vehicles having different performance capabilities, flying in increasingly complex airspace, and using adaptive contingencies to manage normal and non-normal operations. These changes compel development of new and emerging capabilities that enable innovative ways for humans to interact with data and manage information. In-creasing complexity of AAM corresponds with use of predictive modeling, data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to effectively address known hazards and emergent risks. The roles of humans will dynamically evolve in increments with this technological and operational evolution. The interfaces for how humans will interact with increasingly complex and assured systems designed to operate autonomously and how information will need to be presented are important challenges to be resolved.

Lawrence J Prinzel↗

NASA NTRS2018

Reliable and Secure Surveillance, Communications and Navigation (RSCAN) for Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) in Controlled Airspace

The aviation industry faces a rapidly-emerging need for integrating Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) into the national airspace (NAS). This trend will present challenging questions for the safe operation of UAS in controlled and uncontrolled airspaces based on new Communications, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) technologies. For example, can wireless communications data links provide the necessary capacity for accommodating ever increasing numbers of UAS worldwide? Does the communications network provide ample Internet Protocol (IP) address space to allow Air Traffic Control (ATC) to securely address each UAS? Can navigation and surveillance approaches assure safe route planning and safe separation of vehicles even in crowded skies?Under NASA contract NNA16BD84C, Boeing is developing an integrated CNS architecture to enable UAS operations in the NAS. Revolutionary and advanced CNS alternatives are needed to support UAS operations at all altitudes and in all airspaces, including both controlled and uncontrolled. These CNS alternatives must be reliable, redundant, always available, cyber-secure, and affordable for all types of vehicles including small UAS to large transport category aircraft. Our approach considers CNS requirements that address the range of UAS missions where they will be most beneficial and cost-effective.A cybersecure future UAS CNS architecture is needed to support the NASA vision for an Unmanned Air Traffic Management (UTM) system in uncontrolled airspace and a cooperative operation of manned and unmanned aircraft in the controlled global Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. The architecture must, therefore, support always-available and cyber secure operations. This paper presents UAS CNS architecture concepts for large UAS operating in the ATM system in controlled airspace. Future companion works will consider small UAS operating in the UTM system in uncontrolled airspace.

Ponchak, Denise S.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Designing for Advanced Aerial Mobility: Human-Autonomy Teaming and In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance

The continued growth of aviation shall require new innovative technologies and operational concepts to meet the ever-increasing demands on air transportation. The NASA Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) project focuses on emerging aviation markets, such as Urban Air Mobility (UAM). UAM is defined as “...a safe and efficient system for air passenger and cargo transportation within an urban area. It is inclusive of small package delivery and other urban unmanned aerial system services and supports a mix of onboard/ground-piloted and increasingly autonomous operations” ([1]). The AAM project emphasizes technology development and validating system-level concepts and solutions in coordination with other NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) projects to enable UAM metro- and micro-plex vertiport and airspace concepts of operations. The NASA AAM research portfolio includes the concepts of Remote Supervisor-in-Command (RSC) and Fleet and Airspace Manager (FAM) as possible human roles for consumer fleet providers. NASA research in RSC is focused on development of guidelines and standards for remote pilots/operators passively and actively controlling a large fleet of autonomous aircraft. For FAM, flight and ground system concepts and technologies to enable high density homogeneous operations at increased scale from vertiport(s), and coordination with other humans in the systems (e.g., UAM urban airspace manager, Air Traffic Control) are key research areas. The envisioned UAM operations are posited to require autonomous systems to enable functions ranging from fleet and resource management to vehicle control. Although automation has become increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous in civil aviation, autonomy represents a significant evolution in automation, which has generally been limited in functional scope and capability. As autonomy takes on increasing responsibilities, humans and machines will be required to work together in new and different ways [2], rather than traditional design approaches focused on how machines (i.e., autonomy) can do the work of people. The emerging field of human-autonomy teaming (HAT) represents a comprehensive and prioritized research-driven approach to enable the success of future emerging aviation market applications through capabilities and principles that facilitate humans and machine working and thinking better together. The NASA Transformational Tools and Technologies (TTT) Autonomous System (AS) Sub-project was created to assist with the transition into higher levels of autonomy to enable new modes of air transportation, such as UAM. TTT-AS has identified HAT as a key research need to enable UAM while maintaining today’s ultra-safe aviation system safety levels. The latter challenge has been taken up by the NASA System-Wide Safety (SWS) Project, which recognizes that aviation safety, as it evolves, shall require new ways of thinking about safety to include integration of a wide-range of existing and new safety systems and practices, enhanced tools and technologies, increased access to data and data fusion, improved data analysis capabilities, enhanced in-time risk monitoring and detection, hazard prioritization and mitigation, safety assurance decision-support, and in-time integrated system analytics [3].The operational concept of UAM represents a variety of work that has been termed, “work-as-imagined” to characterize the idea that how people think that work is done and how work is actually done are often not the same [4]. To ensure design success and system safety, looking at “work-as-done” provides a comparative approach toward UAM concept and technology design through examination of corresponding analogs found today in aviation (e.g., on-demand operations) and other transportation domains (e.g., port operations). The paper shall discuss various alternative applications with specific focus on airline operation center (AOC) operations, and unmanned aerial system (UAS) command-and-control to inform scaled-versions of FAM and RSC, respectively, and with consideration of the national airspace system contextual environment. The tenets and principles of the HAT field and current NASA research efforts under the TTT-AS sub-project shall also be described. Finally, the SWS sub-project efforts to develop In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance (ISSA) and In-Time Safety Management Systems (IASMS) are discussed in terms of how “in-time” safety assurance may be conceptualized for the on-demand mobility air taxi “work-as-imagined” operational concept [5]. As part of this effort, concepts from the emerging field of resilience engineering, are being studied. Traditional approaches to aviation safety have focused on what can go wrong and how to prevent it. Another approach to thinking about system safety should reflect not only “avoiding things that go wrong” (protective safety) but also “ensuring that things go right” (productive safety), that enables a system to exhibit the resilient performance [6] necessary for the success of the future aviation system emerging concepts of operations. The paper shall describe efforts focused on how productive safety and resilience may enable a more complete approach to system safety thinking and design of ISSA and IASMS for UAM. Future directions and research needs shall also be discussed.

resilience↗

NASA NTRS2023

Vertiport Dynamic Density

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is envisioned to be another spoke in a region’s transportation system, supplementing ground-based travel with air-based travel. Eventually, air taxis will be pervasive, convenient, and affordable. As demand and operations tempo increase, congestion may arise. Several characteristics of AAM reduce the applicability of techniques used in today’s National Airspace System (NAS) to manage congestion. AAM will include both scheduled and non-scheduled, on-demand operations, challenging strategic deconfliction algorithms. Flights will be fairly short, traversing an urban area, not hundreds or thousands of miles, with corresponding low energy reserves, prohibiting excessive delays. Flight operators will need flexibility in operations, scheduling a flight only minutes before departure, or diverting to an alternate vertiport if it becomes advantageous, further adding to trajectory uncertainty that would challenge strategic deconfliction. Finally, operators will desire privacy to protect sensitive information or preserve competitive advantage, limiting early access to intent information. In this paper, we present an approach for managing congestion at vertiports by providing insight into the traffic situation to support operationally-advantageous and safe land or divert decisions. We propose a metric designed with usefulness and usability in AAM operations in mind. The metric uses the sociology concept of dynamic density (DD) that takes into consideration not only number of flights, but also the interaction of those flights with the vertiport’s limited resources, namely the landing pads and the parking spots. DD supports a Pilot in Command (PIC) with decisions about whether to proceed, expedite, delay, or divert; and supports air traffic control (ATC) and vertiport operators in airspace management and vertiport usage. We demonstrate the metric on a notional vertiport scenario. We also show that DD provides better insight into congestion and resulting flight delays than an aircraft count metric used in traditional air traffic management.

Lilly Spirkovska↗

NASA NTRS2016

NASA WorldWind: Open Source Visualization Technology for Earth Observation

NASA WorldWind: Open Source Visualization Technology for Earth Observation WorldWind, open source virtual globe technology for Java, iOS, Android and Web, is provided by NASA and is architected as API-centric modular componentry. This enable it to be continually optimized and feature-enriched in ways that allow applications based on this SDK (Software Development Kit) to benefit Earth Observation, especially Open Science, with minimal or no adjustment for the decade ahead. The next-generation National Airspace System (NAS) aviation management system for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, uses WorldWind, as do applications currently being developed by the European Space Agency, along with several other US and European government agencies and industry partners. This presentation will demonstrate several NASA open source use cases for WorldWind technology that include advances being made to optimize access to NetCDF and HDF data via WebWorldWind.NASA WorldWind: Multidimensional Geospatial Web Platform The ability to see spatial data in its native context is essential for that data to be appreciated whether by the scientific community, policy and decision-makers or the general public. Recently, the accessibility of spatial data has dramatically improved. Without the need to install an application, spatial data can now be experienced via any web browser, mobile devices included. For developers, by simply updating the app on your server, the latest version of your application is now immediately available to your entire usercommunity. Unlike other virtual globes such as Google Earth, NASA World Wind offers something very special, full control to customize the interface with any features or functionalities you might need. You decide how the data is accessed and experienced. This allows you to provide maximum value of the information to your user community. The web version of NASA WorldWind (WebWorldWind) has made it possible for a whole new suite of applications for managing and sharing spatial data. Apps built with this web version are ideal for immediate social media type activity and also facilitate delivery of sophisticated data exchange scenarios such as weather and climate research, disaster response, personal navigation, and industrial-strength tracking for transportation, supply chain, aviation and satellites. WebWorldWind is an application component, not an app in itself. It is written in JavaScript and provides the real world geographic context for spatial data and information visualization, using a rich set of shapes and graphic primitives. WebWorldWind also provides platform independence, while accommodating any number of data types. Web WorldWind runs on any platform via a browser, i.e., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Features include, 3D virtual globe, 2D map with multiple projection choices (Mercator, Polar, UPS, Equirectangular), imagery and elevation import, extensible, data retrieval (via REST, WMS, WCS, WFS, Bing, User-Defined), decluttering, measurement, accurate line-ofsight, subsurface visualization, and more.

Open Source Mapping↗

NASA NTRS2023

Missed Approach Procedures in Advanced Air Mobility: Conceptual Exploration

The High Density Vertiplex Sub-Project, as part of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Project, has been in collaboration with a team from Wisk Aero focusing on vertiport operations, procedures, and concept development. A particular area of focus has been on the development of missed approach scenarios and procedures that highlight the potential changes in the nearer- and further-term operational time frames. Such changes relate to topic areas such as airspace design, automation and autonomy, roles and responsibilities of actors and stakeholders, airspace management services and systems, as well as technologies specific to vertiport operations management. This paper presents the current state of joint concept development through the established collaboration and the application of elements in ongoing testing as part of NASA’s High Density Vertiplex Sub-Project’s research strategy.

vertiport↗