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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2019

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) Project: ACAS Xu Engineering Analysis Results

This presentation provides an overview of the results from a two-part engineering analysis conducted as part of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) Project. Part one of this analysis examined how to present resolution advisories (RAs) issued by Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) Xu, which can be in the vertical dimension, the horizontal dimension, or both (i.e., "blended"). The study varied the appearance of the alerting and the verbiage used in the aural alerts. Results revealed high acceptability ratings for the appearance of the RA guidance. Part two of the analysis assessed pilot acceptability of varying levels of automation in the collision avoidance (CA) task. Pilots experienced conditions in which ACAS Xu RAs were executed either manually or automatically (i.e., auto-Collision Avoidance). In some conditions the return to a previously filed course was also executed automatically (auto-Return to Course). Results indicated that improvements are needed to how the state of the automation is presented. Implications of these findings are also discussed.

Detect and Avoid↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Identifying Human Factors Research for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)

This paper identifies some of the key human factors (HF) challenges when integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) into the civil airspace. Unique HF considerations—those which are derived from the key differentiating aspects of UAS/AAM compared to conventional aviation—are the primary basis for identifying HF research opportunities. By identifying what makes UAS and AAM fundamentally different from conventional aviation, from a human integration perspective, HF research can be targeted to effectively inform best practices, standards, policy, guidance, and regulations associated with aircraft and air traffic systems and operations. HF research areas are discussed within the following topic areas: Sustained low-altitude operations; loss of natural sensing; novel aircraft; novel operations; link management and lost link; link performance; distributed pilot teams; and increased automation. The identified research descriptions are intended to serve as illustrative examples of what research is fundamental, and why. They are not intended to prescribe, prioritize or exclude research.

AAM↗
NASA NTRS2015

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration into the National Airspace System Visual-Line-of-Sight Human-in-the-Loop Experiment

As part of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS) project, research on integrating small UAS (sUAS) into the NAS was underway by a human-systems integration (HSI) team at the NASA Langley Research Center. Minimal to no research has been conducted on the safe, effective, and efficient manner in which to integrate these aircraft into the NAS. sUAS are defined as aircraft weighing 55 pounds or less. The objective of this human system integration team was to build a UAS Ground Control Station (GCS) and to develop a research test-bed and database that provides data, proof of concept, and human factors guidelines for GCS operations in the NAS. The objectives of this experiment were to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of flying sUAS in Class D and Class G airspace utilizing manual control inputs and voice radio communications between the pilot, mission control, and air traffic control. The design of the experiment included three sets of GCS display configurations, in addition to a hand-held control unit. The three different display configurations were VLOS, VLOS + Primary Flight Display (PFD), and VLOS + PFD + Moving Map (Map). Test subject pilots had better situation awareness of their vehicle position, altitude, airspeed, location over the ground, and mission track using the Map display configuration. This configuration allowed the pilots to complete the mission objectives with less workload, at the expense of having better situation awareness of other aircraft. The subjects were better able to see other aircraft when using the VLOS display configuration. However, their mission performance, as well as their ability to aviate and navigate, was reduced compared to runs that included the PFD and Map displays.

Trujillo, Anna C.↗
NASA NTRS2023

BERT-Based Topic Modeling and Information Retrieval to Support Fishbone Diagramming for Safe Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Wildfire Response

Recent concepts for emerging wildfire response operations have included unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) due to their increasing accessibility and capabilities. To integrate UAS into wildfire response safely, researchers have studied the use of large repositories of historic incident reports to improve the scope of root cause analysis. Recent work has emphasized applying state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from these repositories. However, it has not yet been studied how these results can be interpreted and integrated into the systems engineering process. In this work, we propose a process in which Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based topic modeling and information retrieval are applied to a relevant set of documents in order to support the development of a fishbone diagram in a semiautomated process. High-level themes in the document set are identified using topic modeling, which are then refined and interpreted by a human analyst. Then, the themes are used to guide a finer search using information retrieval, which returns specific incident reports of relevance. This provides traceability to specific incidents as well as broader categorizations that comprise the fishbone branches. We apply the proposed process to relevant documents from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). The proposed process is widely applicable when relevant documents are available, and the results from this study will be useful to identifying potential causes of wildfire response UAS incidents.

Hazard analysis↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

BERT-based Topic Modeling and Information Retrieval to Support Fishbone Diagramming for Safe Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Wildfire Response

Recent concepts for emerging wildfire response operations have included unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) due to their increasing accessibility and capabilities. To integrate UAS into wildfire response safely, researchers have studied the use of large repositories of historic incident reports to improve the scope of root cause analysis. Recent work has emphasized applying state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from these repositories. However, it has not yet been studied how these results can be interpreted and integrated into the systems engineering process. In this work, we propose a process in which Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based topic modeling and information retrieval are applied to a relevant set of documents in order to support the development of a fishbone diagram in a semiautomated process. High-level themes in the document set are identified using topic modeling, which are then refined and interpreted by a human analyst. Then, the themes are used to guide a finer search using information retrieval, which returns specific incident reports of relevance. This provides traceability to specific incidents as well as broader categorizations that comprise the fishbone branches. We apply the proposed process to relevant documents from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). The proposed process is widely applicable when relevant documents are available, and the results from this study will be useful to identifying potential causes of wildfire response UAS incidents.

hazard analysis↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

BERT-based Topic Modeling and Information Retrieval to Support Fishbone Diagramming for Safe Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Wildfire Response

Recent concepts for emerging wildfire response operations have included unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) due to their increasing accessibility and capabilities. To integrate UAS into wildfire response safely, researchers have studied the use of large repositories of historic incident reports to improve the scope of root cause analysis. Recent work has emphasized applying state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from these repositories. However, it has not yet been studied how these results can be interpreted and integrated into the systems engineering process. In this work, we propose a process in which Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based topic modeling and information retrieval are applied to a relevant set of documents in order to support the development of a fishbone diagram in a semiautomated process. High-level themes in the document set are identified using topic modeling, which are then refined and interpreted by a human analyst. Then, the themes are used to guide a finer search using information retrieval, which returns specific incident reports of relevance. This provides traceability to specific incidents as well as broader categorizations that comprise the fishbone branches. We apply the proposed process to relevant documents from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). The proposed process is widely applicable when relevant documents are available, and the results from this study will be useful to identifying potential causes of wildfire response UAS incidents.

hazard analysis↗
DOE OSTI2022

The DataHawk2 uncrewed aircraft system for atmospheric research

Abstract. The DataHawk2 (DH2) is a small, fixed-wing, uncrewed aircraft system, or UAS, developed at the University of Colorado (CU) primarily for taking detailed thermodynamic measurements of the atmospheric boundary layer. The DH2 weighs 1.7 kg and has a wingspan of 1.3 m, with a flight endurance of approximately 60 min, depending on configuration. In the DH2's most modern form, the aircraft carries a Vaisala RSS-421 sensor for pressure, temperature, and relative humidity measurements, two CU-developed infrared temperature sensors, and a CU-developed fine-wire array, in addition to sensors required to support autopilot function (pitot tube with pressure sensor, GPS receiver, inertial measurement unit), from which wind speed and direction can also be estimated. This paper presents a description of the DH2, including information on its design and development work, and puts the DH2 into context with respect to other contemporary UASs. Data from recent field work (MOSAiC, the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) is presented and compared with radiosondes deployed during that campaign to provide an overview of sensor and system performance. These data show good agreement across pressure, temperature, and relative humidity as well as across wind speed and direction. Additional examples of measurements provided by the DH2 are given from a variety of previous campaigns in locations ranging from the continental United States to Japan and northern Alaska. Finally, a look toward future system improvements and upcoming research campaign participation is given.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Usability of an Updated Version of the Supplemental Data Service Provider-Consolidated Dashboard for Supporting Uncrewed Aircraft System Traffic Management

The Supplemental Data Service Provider-Consolidated Dashboard (SDSP-CD) is a preflight planning user interface (UI) that serves to aid operators when drafting routes for small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUASs). The primary function of the SDSP-CD is to identify hazards that an sUAS may encounter along a proposed flight path and assess the severity of these risks. A usability study was conducted on an updated version of the SDSP-CD to determine if the most recent iterations made to the system improved objective performance and subjective user experience. There are two main components of the SDSP-CD interface: (1) the dashboard and (2) the interactive map. The dashboard provides users with hazard and vehicle limitations for each sUAS in their fleet while the map contains a graphical representation of each vehicle’s route, hazard details, and geographic information. A series of preflight risk-assessment questions and tasks were developed to examine how participants interact with the updated version of the SDSP-CD. Additionally, a new service that measures vertiport congestion was developed and included as one of the services that was tested. In the present study, participants were trained to use the SDSP-CD and then completed two simulated scenarios during which they performed a variety of tasks, responded to questions, and completed surveys. The two scenarios developed for the present study were the Package Delivery and Hurricane Preparation scenarios. The Package Delivery scenario involved a fleet of four sUASs delivering low-stakes items (e.g., lunches and snacks) to people in a fictitious city. The Hurricane Preparation scenario involved a fleet of 11 sUASs delivering a range of supplies (from medicine to boardgames) to employees stranded at an office park due to road closures caused by an impending hurricane. Participants assumed the role of a fleet manager during both scenarios and were responsible for managing the sUASs in their fleet. Questions included those with objectively correct responses, open-ended strategy responses, and subjective user experience feedback. It was found that participants were largely successful at using the SDSP-CD interface to answer questions with objectively correct responses. Additionally, participants were able to use reasoning and logic based on the information available in the SDSP-CD to determine the cause of various risks and what actions they would consider taking. Finally, although participants reported that there were elements of the UI that could be improved, overall feedback pertaining to user experience suggested that the SDSP-CD concept is viable.

usability testing↗
DOE OSTI2021

Black Swift Technologies S0 Uncrewed Aircraft System Data

This dataset includes atmospheric measurements obtained with the Black Swift Technologies S0 uncrewed aircraft system at the ARM SGP facility and a nearby mesonet site (Marshall). Flights were conducted over a one-week period, alongside platforms deployed by the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2017

High-Fidelity Multi-Rotor Unmanned Aircraft System Simulation Development for Trajectory Prediction Under Off-Nominal Flight Dynamics

The NASA Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) project is conducting research to enable civilian low-altitude airspace and UAS operations. A goal of this project is to develop probabilistic methods to quantify risk during failures and off nominal flight conditions. An important part of this effort is the reliable prediction of feasible trajectories during off-nominal events such as control failure, atmospheric upsets, or navigation anomalies that can cause large deviations from the intended flight path or extreme vehicle upsets beyond the normal flight envelope. Few examples of high-fidelity modeling and prediction of off-nominal behavior for small UAS (sUAS) vehicles exist, and modeling requirements for accurately predicting flight dynamics for out-of-envelope or failure conditions are essentially undefined. In addition, the broad range of sUAS aircraft configurations already being fielded presents a significant modeling challenge, as these vehicles are often very different from one another and are likely to possess dramatically different flight dynamics and resultant trajectories and may require different modeling approaches to capture off-nominal behavior. NASA has undertaken an extensive research effort to define sUAS flight dynamics modeling requirements and develop preliminary high fidelity six degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) simulations capable of more closely predicting off-nominal flight dynamics and trajectories. This research has included a literature review of existing sUAS modeling and simulation work as well as development of experimental testing methods to measure and model key components of propulsion, airframe and control characteristics. The ultimate objective of these efforts is to develop tools to support UTM risk analyses and for the real-time prediction of off-nominal trajectories for use in the UTM Risk Assessment Framework (URAF). This paper focuses on modeling and simulation efforts for a generic quad-rotor configuration typical of many commercial vehicles in use today. An overview of relevant off-nominal multi-rotor behaviors will be presented to define modeling goals and to identify the prediction capability lacking in simplified models of multi-rotor performance. A description of recent NASA wind tunnel testing of multi-rotor propulsion and airframe components will be presented illustrating important experimental and data acquisition methods, and a description of preliminary propulsion and airframe models will be presented. Lastly, examples of predicted off-nominal flight dynamics and trajectories from the simulation will be presented.

Foster, John V.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Flight Demonstration of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) at Technical Capability Level 3

The goal of the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) effort at NASA is to enable access to low-altitude airspace for small UAS. This goal is being achieved partly through partnerships that NASA has developed with the FAA, other government agencies, the UAS stakeholder community, and the designated FAA UAS Test Sites. This paper reports the technical and operational capabilities demonstrated during the UTM flight demonstration, March 6 through May 30, 2018. The demonstration featured geographically diverse operations, involving FAA UAS Test Sites in Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia. The demonstration leveraged the contributions of 30 partner organizations serving as UAS service suppliers, UAS operators, and/or providers of sensors, surveillance, connectivity, and management roles. Utilizing the UTM architecture developed at NASA, the demonstration explored 11 use cases for small UAS operations to highlight UTM capabilities at what NASA calls “Technical Capability Level (TCL) 3.” TCL 3 is characterized by multiple small UAS safely operating in moderately populated areas and beyond the visual line of sight of their operators. The TCL 3 flights demonstrated the basic feasibility of such operations in the UTM environment, including USS exchanges; communication, navigation and surveillance functions; sense and avoid capabilities; and technologies and procedures to enable them.

Aweiss, Arwa↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Impedance-Based Complexity Metric for Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Scenario Classification

This paper introduces an impedance-based metric to capture the complexity of a given unmanned aircraft system traffic scenario. The metric accounts for both the number of aircraft and the traffic flow pattern. The work presented here extends an earlier approach that introduced another scenario complexity metric based on the number of potential conflicts weighted by the conflict resolution cost associated. Complexity measurements for randomly-generated scenarios were produced through high-fidelity fast-time simulations and treated as baseline. Then the impedance based metric was evaluated, for the same scenarios, without the need for an actual flight simulation and a conflict resolution method. The results show that the impedance-based metric has a strong correlation to the baseline data and performs marginally better than the weighted conflict-based complexity metric introduced in the earlier work. The metric computation generates impedance maps which are useful for identifying high complexity regions in a scenario, where flight plan changes might be necessitated. This metric can therefore be used, in conjunction with other complexity metrics, to inform adequate traffic management strategies and classify a traffic scenario as acceptable, unacceptable or acceptable with changes made to flight plans that pass through the high complexity regions. The metric can also be used as a guidance metric for strategic conflict management methods.

Complexity↗
NASA NTRS2016

Weathering the Storm: Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Maritime, Atmospheric and Polar Environments

Unmanned systems have the potential to efficiently, effectively, economically, and safely bridge critical observation requirements in an environmentally friendly manner. As the United States Atmospheric, Marine and Arctic areas of interest expand and include hard-to-reach regions of the Earth (such as the Arctic and remote oceanic areas) optimizing unmanned capabilities will be needed to advance the United States science, technology and security efforts. Through increased multi-mission and multi-agency operations using improved inter-operable and autonomous unmanned systems, the research and operations communities will better collect environmental intelligence and better protect our country against hazardous weather, environmental, marine and polar hazards. This presentation will examine UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) operations which includes developing a coordinated effort to maximize the efficiency and capabilities of unmanned systems across the federal government and research partners. Numerous intra- and inter-agency operational demonstrations and assessments have been made to verify and validated these UAS observations. The NASA-specific elements will consist of an overview of NASA UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) available to science and recent missions.

Atmospheric↗
NASA NTRS1994

Aircraft system aft telescope cavity configuration study for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), phase 2

The SOFIA Aircraft System (AS) Phase 1 Study was a broad-based study which addressed itself to satisfying technical and programmatic requirements by drawing from existing technology and applying cost-efficient commercial approaches to the aircraft modification. In this SOFIA AS Phase 2 Study, five critical areas of the aircraft were selected for more detailed investigation: forward pressure bulkhead, aft bulkhead, 'free' shell to bulkhead interface, shell cut-out to bulkhead interface, and flooring. The in-depth investigation of these areas upon a finite element model (FEM), with a fine grid model in areas of particular interest, is discussed. The FEM code used is called 'STRAP' and was developed by the engineering firm, Rasmussen and Associates. STRAP is NASTRAN compatible to within 1%. The loads applied to the model were approximated from known 747 envelope conditions. The areas of investigation, and a section through the fuselage is shown. The thrust of this investigation was to develop the design concepts conceived under phase 1 to the point where detailed design could be undertaken with a high level of confidence.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2014

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Delegation of Separation in NextGen Airspace

The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) performing delegated separation in the national airspace system (NAS). Delegated separation is the transfer of responsibility for maintaining separation between aircraft or vehicles from air navigation service providers to the relevant pilot or flight operator. The effects of delegated separation and traffic display information level were collected through performance, workload, and situation awareness measures. The results of this study show benefits related to the use of conflict detection alerts being shown on the UAS operator's cockpit situation display (CSD), and to the use of full delegation. Overall, changing the level of separation responsibility and adding conflict detection alerts on the CSD was not found to have an adverse effect on performance as shown by the low amounts of losses of separation. The use of conflict detection alerts on the CSD and full delegation responsibilities given to the UAS operator were found to create significantly reduced workload, significantly increased situation awareness and significantly easier communications between the UAS operator and air traffic controller without significantly increasing the amount of losses of separation.

NextGen↗
NASA NTRS2014

The Development of Human Factor Guidelines for Unmanned Aircraft System Control Stations

Despite being referred to as unmanned some of the major challenges confronting unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) relate to human factors. NASA is conducting research to address the human factors relevant to UAS access to non-segregated airspace. This work covers the issues of pilot performance, interaction with ATC, and control station design. A major outcome of this research will be recommendations for human factors design guidelines for UAS control stations to support routine beyond-line-of-sight operations in the US national airspace system (NAS). To be effective, guidelines must be relevant to a wide range of systems, must not be overly prescriptive, and must not impose premature standardization on evolving technologies. In developing guidelines, we recognize that existing regulatory and guidance material may already provide adequate coverage of certain issues. In other cases suitable guidelines may be found in existing military or industry human factors standards. In cases where appropriate existing standards cannot be identified, original guidelines will be proposed.

guidelines↗
NASA NTRS2018

Performing a Comprehensive Unmanned Aircraft System Full Integration Analysis for NASA ARMD

For many years, the concept of routinely flying unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) within the national airspace system (NAS) has been a long-term goal with numerous known and unknown technology and policy obstacles. Just within the last few years, the efforts and advancements from government, industry, and academia-sponsored research and development have greatly shortened the distance to the goal. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) has recognized that it is uniquely positioned to play a lead role in addressing the remaining UAS airspace integration (AI) challenges. To fully understand the magnitude and scope of these challenges, NASA ARMD initiated a study in 2015 to identify what would be needed to enable full integration of UAS for civil/commercial operations within the NAS by 2025. The desired outcome was a comprehensive analysis framework that ARMD could use to develop a research portfolio focused on retiring the remaining gaps and challenges standing in the way of full UAS integration. This document is a comprehensive assessment of UAS integration research to date.

UAS in the NAS↗