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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

VFR Trajectory Forecasting using Deep Generative Model for Autonomous Airspace Operations

To enable the airspace integration of autonomous operations, such as uncrewed aircraft conducting cargo deliveries, there is a need to forecast the positions of the surrounding traffic with which they may interact. This paper focuses on forecasting Visual Flight Rules traffic, a significant source of uncertainty and risk in the airspace, especially around small regional airports, due to the unplanned and often untracked nature of such flights. A deep generative model is developed, trained on historical traffic data at example towered and non-towered airports, and used to predict flight trajectories. Experimental results are presented comparing the performance of variational autoencoder and classical machine learning forecasting when applied to both the towered and non-towered airports over varying time horizons. The results show the advantages of the variational autoencoder in producing accurate probabilistic forecasts over varying time horizons.

uncrewed aircraft↗
NASA NTRS2003

Pilot Interactions in an Over-Constrained Conflict Scenario as Studied in a Piloted Simulation of Autonomous Aircraft Operations

Feasibility and safety of autonomous aircraft operations were studied in a multi-piloted simulation of overconstrained traffic conflicts to determine the need for, and utility of, priority flight rules to maintain safety in this extraordinary and potentially hazardous situation. An overconstrained traffic conflict is one in which the separation assurance objective is incompatible with other objectives. In addition, a proposed scheme for implementing priority flight rules by staggering the alerting time between the two aircraft in conflict was tested for effectiveness. The feasibility study was conducted through a simulation in the Air Traffic Operations Laboratory at the NASA Langley Research Center. This research activity is a continuation of the Distributed Air-Ground Traffic Management feasibility analysis reported in the 4th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar in December 2001 (paper #48). The over-constrained conflict scenario studied here consisted of two piloted aircraft that were assigned an identical en-route waypoint arrival time and altitude crossing restriction. The simulation results indicated that the pilots safely resolved the conflict without the need for a priority flight rule system. Occurrences of unnecessary maneuvering near the common waypoint were traced to false conflict alerts, generated as the result of including waypoint constraint information in the broadcast data link message issued from each aircraft. This result suggests that, in the conservative interests of safety, broadcast intent information should be based on the commanded trajectory and not on the Flight Management System flight plan, to which the aircraft may not actually adhere. The use of priority flight rules had no effect on the percentage of the aircraft population meeting completely predictable which aircraft in a given pair would meet the constraints and which aircraft would make the first maneuver to yield right-of-way. Therefore, the proposed scheme for implementing priority flight rules through staggering the alerting time between the two aircraft was completely effective. The data and observations from this experiment, together with results from the previously reported study, support the feasibility of autonomous aircraft operations.

Wing, David J.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Demonstrating Autonomous Mission Operations Onboard the International Space Station

The NASA Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an experiment to turn over operation and management of selected International Space Station (ISS) sys- tems to the on-board crew. ISS crews managed two different spacecraft systems: the Total Organic Carbon Analyzer (TOCA), a water quality analyzer, and Station Support Com- puters (SSC) laptops, which are non-critical crew computer systems. These systems were selected because they are representative of systems a future crew may need to operate au- tonomously during a deep space mission. The crew autonomously operated these systems, taking on mission operations functions traditionally performed by support teams on the ground, using new software tools that provide decision support algorithms for planning, monitoring and fault management, hardware schematics, system briefs, and data displays that are normally unavailable to the crew. The experiment lasted seven months, during which ISS crews managed TOCA and SSCs on 22 occasions. The AMO software processed data from TOCA and SSCs continuously during this seven month period. The combined performance of the software and crew achieved a 88 success rate on managing TOCA activity, the system for which ground-truth was available.

Autonomous Mission Operations↗
NASA NTRS1998

The Spacecraft Emergency Response System (SERS) for Autonomous Mission Operations

Today, most mission operations are geared toward lowering cost through unmanned operations. 7-day/24-hour operations are reduced to either 5-day/8-hour operations or become totally autonomous, especially for deep-space missions. Proper and effective notification during a spacecraft emergency could mean success or failure for an entire mission. The Spacecraft Emergency Response System (SERS) is a tool designed for autonomous mission operations. The SERS automatically contacts on-call personnel as needed when crises occur, either on-board the spacecraft or within the automated ground systems. Plus, the SERS provides a group-ware solution to facilitate the work of the person(s) contacted. The SERS is independent of the spacecraft's automated ground system. It receives and catalogues reports for various ground system components in near real-time. Then, based on easily configurable parameters, the SERS determines whom, if anyone, should be alerted. Alerts may be issued via Sky-Tel 2-way pager, Telehony, or e-mail. The alerted personnel can then review and respond to the spacecraft anomalies through the Netscape Internet Web Browser, or directly review and respond from the Sky-Tel 2-way pager.

Breed, Julia↗
NASA NTRS1991

Fuzzy logic in autonomous orbital operations

Fuzzy logic can be used advantageously in autonomous orbital operations that require the capability of handling imprecise measurements from sensors. Several applications are underway to investigate fuzzy logic approaches and develop guidance and control algorithms for autonomous orbital operations. Translational as well as rotational control of a spacecraft have been demonstrated using space shuttle simulations. An approach to a camera tracking system has been developed to support proximity operations and traffic management around the Space Station Freedom. Pattern recognition and object identification algorithms currently under development will become part of this camera system at an appropriate level in the future. A concept to control environment and life support systems for large Lunar based crew quarters is also under development. Investigations in the area of reinforcement learning, utilizing neural networks, combined with a fuzzy logic controller, are planned as a joint project with the Ames Research Center.

Lea, Robert N.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Autonomous Mission Operations

NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an empirical investigation of the impact of time-delay on todays mission operations, and of the effect of processes and mission support tools designed to mitigate time-delay related impacts. Mission operation scenarios were designed for NASA's Deep Space Habitat (DSH), an analog spacecraft habitat, covering a range of activities including nominal objectives, DSH system failures, and crew medical emergencies. The scenarios were simulated at time-delay values representative of Lunar (1.2-5 sec), Near Earth Object (NEO) (50 sec) and Mars (300 sec) missions. Each combination of operational scenario and time-delay was tested in a Baseline configuration, designed to reflect present-day operations of the International Space Station, and a Mitigation configuration in which a variety of software tools, information displays, and crew-ground communications protocols were employed to assist both crews and Flight Control Team (FCT) members with the long-delay conditions. Preliminary findings indicate: 1) Workload of both crew members and FCT members generally increased along with increasing time delay. 2) Advanced procedure execution viewers, caution and warning tools, and communications protocols such as text messaging decreased the workload of both flight controllers and crew, and decreased the difficulty of coordinating activities. 3) Whereas crew workload ratings increased between 50 sec and 300 sec of time-delay in the Baseline configuration, workload ratings decreased (or remained flat) in the Mitigation configuration.

Mission Operations↗
NASA NTRS2008

Re-Engineering the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Satellite Utilizing Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Mission Services Center (GMSEC) Middleware Based Technology to Enable Lights Out Operations and Autonomous Re-Dump of Lost Telemetry Data

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft was launched in November of 1996 in order to obtain unique three dimensional radar cross sectional observations of cloud structures with particular interest in hurricanes. The TRMM mission life was recently extended with current estimates that operations will continue through the 2012-2013 timeframe. Faced with this extended mission profile, the project has embarked on a technology refresh and re-engineering effort. TRMM has recently implemented a re-engineering effort to expand a middleware based messaging architecture to enable fully redundant lights-out of flight operations activities. The middleware approach is based on the Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC) architecture, tools and associated open-source Applications Programming Interface (API). Middleware based messaging systems are useful in spacecraft operations and automation systems because private node based knowledge (such as that within a telemetry and command system) can be broadcast on the middleware messaging bus and hence enable collaborative decisions to be made by multiple subsystems. In this fashion, private data is made public and distributed within the local area network and multiple nodes can remain synchronized with other nodes. This concept is useful in a fully redundant architecture whereby one node is monitoring the processing of the 'prime' node so that in the event of a failure the backup node can assume operations of the prime, without loss of state knowledge. This paper will review and present the experiences, architecture, approach and lessons learned of the TRMM re-engineering effort centered on the GMSEC middleware architecture and tool suite. Relevant information will be presented that relates to the dual redundant parallel nature of the Telemetry and Command (T and C) and Front-End systems and how these systems can interact over a middleware bus to achieve autonomous operations including autonomous commanding to recover missing science data during the same spacecraft contact.

Marius, Julio L.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Autonomous Satellite Operations Via Secure Virtual Mission Operations Center

The science community is interested in improving their ability to respond to rapidly evolving, transient phenomena via autonomous rapid reconfiguration, which derives from the ability to assemble separate but collaborating sensors and data forecasting systems to meet a broad range of research and application needs. Current satellite systems typically require human intervention to respond to triggers from dissimilar sensor systems. Additionally, satellite ground services often need to be coordinated days or weeks in advance. Finally, the boundaries between the various sensor systems that make up such a Sensor Web are defined by such things as link delay and connectivity, data and error rate asymmetry, data reliability, quality of service provisions, and trust, complicating autonomous operations. Over the past ten years, researchers from the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC), General Dynamics, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), Cisco, Universal Space Networks (USN), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Naval Research Laboratory, the DoD Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, and others have worked collaboratively to develop a virtual mission operations capability. Called VMOC (Virtual Mission Operations Center), this new capability allows cross-system queuing of dissimilar mission unique systems through the use of a common security scheme and published application programming interfaces (APIs). Collaborative VMOC demonstrations over the last several years have supported the standardization of spacecraft to ground interfaces needed to reduce costs, maximize space effects to the user, and allow the generation of new tactics, techniques and procedures that lead to responsive space employment.

Miller, Eric↗
NASA NTRS2013

Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operations Simulation Software: Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer

Working on the ACLO (Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operations) project I have had the opportunity to add functionality to the physics simulation software known as KATE (Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer), create a new application allowing WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) creation of KATE schematic files and begin a preliminary design and implementation of a new subsystem that will provide vision services on the IHM (Integrated Health Management) bus. The functionality I added to KATE over the past few months includes a dynamic visual representation of the fluid height in a pipe based on number of gallons of fluid in the pipe and implementing the IHM bus connection within KATE. I also fixed a broken feature in the system called the Browser Display, implemented many bug fixes and made changes to the GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Wehner, Walter S., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Autonomous Cryogenic Load Operations: Knowledge-Based Autonomous Test Engineer

The Knowledge-Based Autonomous Test Engineer (KATE) program has a long history at KSC. Now a part of the Autonomous Cryogenic Load Operations (ACLO) mission, this software system has been sporadically developed over the past 20 years. Originally designed to provide health and status monitoring for a simple water-based fluid system, it was proven to be a capable autonomous test engineer for determining sources of failure in the system. As part of a new goal to provide this same anomaly-detection capability for a complicated cryogenic fluid system, software engineers, physicists, interns and KATE experts are working to upgrade the software capabilities and graphical user interface. Much progress was made during this effort to improve KATE. A display of the entire cryogenic system's graph, with nodes for components and edges for their connections, was added to the KATE software. A searching functionality was added to the new graph display, so that users could easily center their screen on specific components. The GUI was also modified so that it displayed information relevant to the new project goals. In addition, work began on adding new pneumatic and electronic subsystems into the KATE knowledge base, so that it could provide health and status monitoring for those systems. Finally, many fixes for bugs, memory leaks, and memory errors were implemented and the system was moved into a state in which it could be presented to stakeholders. Overall, the KATE system was improved and necessary additional features were added so that a presentation of the program and its functionality in the next few months would be a success.

Schrading, J. Nicolas↗
NASA NTRS2012

Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operations Simulation Software: Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer

The Simulation Software, KATE (Knowledgebase Autonomous Test Engineer), is used to demonstrate the automatic identification of faults in a system. The ACLO (Autonomous Cryogenics Loading Operation) project uses KATE to monitor and find faults in the loading of the cryogenics int o a vehicle fuel tank. The KATE software interfaces with the IHM (Integrated Health Management) systems bus to communicate with other systems that are part of ACLO. One system that KATE uses the IHM bus to communicate with is AIS (Advanced Inspection System). KATE will send messages to AIS when there is a detected anomaly. These messages include visual inspection of specific valves, pressure gauges and control messages to have AIS open or close manual valves. My goals include implementing the connection to the IHM bus within KATE and for the AIS project. I will also be working on implementing changes to KATE's Ul and implementing the physics objects in KATE that will model portions of the cryogenics loading operation.

Wehner, Walter S.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Regaining Lost Separation in a Piloted Simulation of Autonomous Aircraft Operations

NASA is currently investigating a new concept of operations for the National Airspace System, designed to improve capacity while maintaining or improving current levels of safety. This concept, known as Distributed Air/Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM), allows appropriately equipped autonomous aircraft to maneuver freely for flight optimization while resolving conflicts with other traffic and staying out of special use airspace and hazardous weather. While Airborne Separation Assurance System (ASAS) tools would normally allow pilots to resolve conflicts before they become hazardous, evaluation of system performance in sudden, near-term conflicts is needed in order to determine concept feasibility. If an acceptable safety level can be demonstrated in these situations, then operations may be conducted with lower separation minimums. An experiment was conducted in NASA Langley s Air Traffic Operations Lab to address issues associated with resolving near-term conflicts and the potential use of lower separation minimums. Sixteen commercial airline pilots flew a total of 32 traffic scenarios that required them to use prototype ASAS tools to resolve close range pop-up conflicts. Required separation standards were set at either 3 or 5 NM lateral spacing, with 1000 ft vertical separation being used for both cases. Reducing the lateral separation from 5 to 3 NM did not appear to increase operational risk, as indicated by the proximity to the intruder aircraft. Pilots performed better when they followed tactical guidance cues provided by ASAS than when they didn't follow the guidance. As air-air separation concepts are evolved, further studies will consider integration issues between ASAS and existing Airborne Collision Avoidance Systems (ACAS).These types of non-normal events will require the ASAS to provide effective alerts and resolutions prior to the time that an Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) would give a Resolution Advisory (RA). When an RA is issued, a pilot must take immediate action in order to avoid a potential near miss. The Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) II currently functions as an ACAS aboard commercial aircraft. Depending on the own aircraft s altitude, TCAS only issues RA s 15-35 seconds prior to the Closest Point of Approach (CPA). Prior to an RA, DAG-TM pilots operating autonomous aircraft must rely solely on ASAS for resolution guidance. An additional area of DAG-TM concept feasibility relates to a potential reduction in separation standards. Lower separation standards are likely needed in order to improve NAS efficiency and capacity. Current separation minimums are based in large part on the capabilities of older radar systems. Safety assessments are needed to determine the feasibility of reduced separation minimums. They will give strong consideration to surveillance system performance, including accuracy, integrity, and availability. Candidate surveillance systems include Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and multi-lateration systems. Considering studies done for Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (RVSM) operations, it is likely that flight technical errors will also be considered. In addition to a thorough evaluation of surveillance system performance, a potential decision to lower the separation standards should also take operational considerations into account. An ASAS Safety Assessment study identified improper maneuvering in response to a conflict (due to ambiguous or improper resolution commands or a pilot s failure to comply with the resolution) as a potential safety risk. If near-term conflicts with lower separation minimums were determined to be more challenging for pilots, the severity of these risks could be even greater.

Barhydt, Richard↗
NASA NTRS2003

Autonomous Aircraft Operations using RTCA Guidelines for Airborne Conflict Management

A human-in-the-loop experiment was performed at the NASA Langley Research Center to study the feasibility of DAG-TM autonomous aircraft operations in highly constrained airspace. The airspace was constrained by a pair of special-use airspace (SUA) regions on either side of the pilot's planned route. Traffic flow management (TFM) constraints were imposed as a required time of arrival and crossing altitude at an en route fix. Key guidelines from the RTCA Airborne Conflict Management (ACM) concept were applied to autonomous aircraft operations for this experiment. These concepts included the RTCA ACM definitions of distinct conflict detection and collision avoidance zones, and the use of a graded system of conflict alerts for the flight crew. Three studies were conducted in the course of the experiment. The first study investigated the effect of hazard proximity upon pilot ability to meet constraints and solve conflict situations. The second study investigated pilot use of the airborne tools when faced with an unexpected loss of separation (LOS). The third study explored pilot interactions in an over-constrained conflict situation, with and without priority rules dictating who should move first. Detailed results from these studies were presented at the 5th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar (ATM2003). This overview paper focuses on the integration of the RTCA ACM concept into autonomous aircraft operations in highly constrained situations, and provides an overview of the results presented at the ATM2003 seminar. These results, together with previously reported studies, continue to support the feasibility of autonomous aircraft operations.

Krishnamurthy, Karthik↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

MISTRAL: Concept and Analysis of Persistent Airborne Localization of GHG Emissions

In this study, we propose a concept for localizing and mitigating greenhouse gases and other emissions from areas of various sizes, using a multiscale, airborne localization fleet, supported by information from satellites. Our objective is a rapidly implementable capability for the reduction of atmospheric methane by empowering the communities in proximity to emissions to actively contribute to methane mitigation via fleet operations by local governments, first responders, and individuals . Fully autonomous operations are economically desirable and technically feasible now. However, the development of regulations for autonomous operations is in early stages. Since rapid impact is critical to reducing emissions, the concept starts with remotely controlled vehicles. As regulations for autonomous operations reach maturity, the concept can be easily transitioned from the remotely piloted to autonomous mode. We report on a preliminary system analysis of the concept. Localization of methane emissions from the Permian Basin oil and gas production site serves as the design reference mission; however, the airborne concept is applicable to a broad range of use cases, and we describe several in this analysis. We consider leveraging satellite and ground-based resources within the airborne concept of operations. The study analyses uninhabited aerial system localization operations under the most conservative assumptions on resources and available information. Even under these assumptions, the concept is shown to be viable for local community operations.

airborne methane localization↗
NASA NTRS2020

Medics: Medical Decision Support System for Long-Duration Space Exploration

The Autonomous Medical Operations (AMO) group at NASA Ames is developing a “medical decision support system” to enable astronauts on long-duration exploration missions to operate autonomously. The system will support clinical actions by providing medical interpretation advice and procedural recommendations during emergent care and clinical work performed by crew. The current state of development of the system, called MedICS (Medical Interpretation Classification and Segmentation) includes two separate aspects: a set of machine learning diagnostic models trained to analyze organ images and patient health records, and an interface to ultrasound diagnostic hardware and to medical repositories. Three sets of images of different organs and medical records were utilized for training machine learning models for various analyses, as follows: 1. Pneumothorax condition (collapsed lung). The trained model provides a positive or negative diagnosis of the condition. 2. Carotid artery occlusion. The trained model produces a diagnosis of 5 different occlusion levels (including “normal”). 3. Ocular retinal images. The model extracts optic disc pixels (image segmentation). This is a precursor step for advanced autonomous fundus clinical evaluation algorithms to be implemented in FY20. 4. Medical health records. The model produces a differential diagnosis for any particular individual, based on symptoms and other health and demographic information. A probability is calculated for each of 25 most common conditions. The same model provides the likelihood of survival. All results are provided with a confidence level. Item 1 images were provided by the US Army and were part of a data set for the clinical treatment of injured battlefield soldiers. This condition is relevant to possible space mishaps, due to pressure management issues. Item 2 images were provided by Houston Methodist Hospital, and item 3 health records were acquired from the MIT laboratory of computational physiology. The machine learning technology utilized is deep multilayer networks (Deep Learning), and new models will continue to be produced, as relevant data is made available and specific health needs of astronaut crews are identified. The interfacing aspects of the system include a GUI for running the different models, and retrieving and storing data, as well as support for integration with an augmented reality (AR) system deployed at JSC by Tietronix Software Inc. (HoloLens). The AR system provides guidance for the placement of an ultrasound transducer that captures images to be sent to the MedICS system for diagnosis. The image captured and the associated diagnosis appear in the technician’s AR visual display.

Colombano, Silvano↗
NASA NTRS1999

Autonomous Command Operations of the WIRE Spacecraft

This paper presents operational innovations which will be introduced on NASA's Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) mission. These innovations include an end-to-end design architecture for an autonomous commanding capability for the uplink of command loads during unattended station contacts. The WIRE mission is the fifth and final mission of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Small Explorer (SMEX) series to be launched in March of 1999. Its primary mission is the targeting of deep space fields using an ultra-cooled infrared telescope. Due to its mission design WIRE command loads are large (approximately 40 Kbytes per 24 hours) and must be performed daily. To reduce the cost of mission operations support that would be required in order to uplink command loads, the WIRE Flight Operations Team has implemented all autonomous command loading capability. This capability allows completely unattended operations over a typical two-day weekend period. The key factors driving design and implementation of this capability were: 1) integration with already existing ground system autonomous capabilities and systems, 2) the desire to evolve autonomous operations capabilities based upon previous SMEX operations experience - specifically the TRACE mission, 3) integration with ground station operations - both autonomous and man-tended, 4) low cost and quick implementation, and 5) end-to-end system robustness. A trade-off study was performed to examine these factors in light of the low-cost, higher-risk SMEX mission philosophy. The study concluded that a STOL (Spacecraft Test and Operations Language) based script, highly integrated with other scripts used to perform autonomous operations, was best suited given the budget and goals of the mission. Each of these factors is discussed in addition to use of the TRACE mission as a testbed for autonomous commanding prior to implementation on WIRE. The capabilities implemented on the WIRE mission are an example of a low-cost, robust, and efficient method for autonomous command loading when implemented with other autonomous features of the ground system. They call be used as a design and implementation template by other missions interested in evolving toward autonomous and lower cost operations. Additionally, the WIRE spacecraft will be used as an operational testbed upon completion of its nominal mission later in 1999. One idea being studied is advanced on-board modeling. Advanced on-board modeling techniques will be used to more efficiently display the spacecraft state. This health and safety information could be used by engineers on the ground or could be used by tile spacecraft for its own assessments. Additionally, this same state information could also be input into the event-driven scheduling system, as the scheduling system will need to assess the spacecraft state before undertaking a new activity. Advanced modeling techniques are being evaluated for a number of NASA missions including The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), which is scheduled to launch in 2007.

Walyus, Keith↗
NASA NTRS2003

Airborne Conflict Management within Confined Airspace in a Piloted Simulation of DAG-TM Autonomous Aircraft Operations

A human-in-the-loop experiment was performed at the NASA Langley Research Center to study the feasibility of Distributed Air/Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM) autonomous aircraft operations in highly constrained airspace. The airspace was constrained by a pair of special use airspace (SUA) regions on either side of the pilot s planned route. The available airspace was further varied by changing the separation standard for lateral separation between 3 nm and 5 nm. The pilot had to maneuver through the corridor between the SUA s, avoid other traffic and meet flow management constraints. Traffic flow management (TFM) constraints were imposed as a required time of arrival and crossing altitude at an en route fix. This is a follow-up study to work presented at the 4th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar in December 2001. Nearly all of the pilots were able to meet their TFM constraints while maintaining adequate separation from other traffic. In only 3 out of 59 runs were the pilots unable to meet their required time of arrival. Two loss of separation cases are studied and it is found that the pilots need conflict prevention information presented in a clearer manner. No degradation of performance or safety was seen between the wide and narrow corridors. Although this was not a thorough study of the consequences of reducing the en route lateral separation, nothing was found that would refute the feasibility of reducing the separation requirement from 5 nm to 3 nm. The creation of additional, second-generation conflicts is also investigated. Two resolution methods were offered to the pilots: strategic and tactical. The strategic method is a closed-loop alteration to the Flight Management System (FMS) active route that considers other traffic as well as TFM constraints. The tactical resolutions are short-term resolutions that leave avoiding other traffic conflicts and meeting the TFM constraints to the pilot. Those that made use of the strategic tools avoided additional conflicts, whereas, those making tactical maneuvers often caused additional conflicts. Many of these second-generation conflicts could be avoided by improved conflict prevention tools that clearly present to the pilot which maneuver choices will result in a conflict-free path. These results, together with previously reported studies, continue to support the feasibility of autonomous aircraft operations.

Barmore, Bryan↗