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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

STEReO: Combining NASA Technologies and Partnerships to Transform Current-Day Emergency Response Operations

STEReO brings together several technologies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), Autonomy, Communications, Human Factors, and Domain Expertise & Tools, aimed at providing scalability and flexibility, as well as operational resiliency to dynamic changes during a disaster event. Some of the concepts STEReO explores are: collaborative tools to ingest remote sensing information and distribute a common mission operating picture, apply ad-hoc communication networks to facilitate timely information sharing and communication of changes, vehicle-to-vehicle and onboard autonomy technologies ensure the safety and resiliency of operations, and apply NASA’s UAS traffic management system (UTM) as a public safety UAS Service Supplier (USS) to access and coordinate use of the airspace by both manned and unmanned operations. The potential benefits of STEReO include: standardized, cross-platform communication means increased interoperability and ease of cooperation/collaboration, increased situation awareness and common operating picture allow for earlier detection and decision making, and scalable to size and complexity of environment, operations, and mission objectives. This presentation gives an informational overview of the STEReO project and details progress made in the past year, to attendees of the Tactical Fire Remote Sensing Advisory Committee (TFRSAC) fall workshop.

emergency response operations↗

NASA NTRS2021

STEReO

STEReO brings together several technologies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), Autonomy, Communications, Human Factors, and Domain Expertise & Tools, aimed at providing scalability and flexibility, as well as operational resiliency to dynamic changes during a disaster event. Some of the concepts STEReO explores are: collaborative tools to ingest remote sensing information and distribute a common mission operating picture, apply ad-hoc communication networks to facilitate timely information sharing and communication of changes, vehicle-to-vehicle and onboard autonomy technologies ensure the safety and resiliency of operations, and apply NASA’s UAS traffic management system (UTM) as a public safety UAS Service Supplier (USS) to access and coordinate use of the airspace by both manned and unmanned operations. The potential benefits of STEReO include: standardized, cross-platform communication means increased interoperability and ease of cooperation/collaboration, increased situation awareness and common operating picture allow for earlier detection and decision making, and scalable to size and complexity of environment, operations, and mission objectives. This brochure/posture gives an overview of the STEReO project and identifies STEReO as one of the research efforts under the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project within ARMD's Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program (TACP).

traffic management↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO)

STEReO brings together several technologies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), Autonomy, Communications, Human Factors, and Domain Expertise & Tools, aimed at providing scalability and flexibility, as well as operational resiliency to dynamic changes during a disaster event. Some of the concepts STEReO explores are: collaborative tools to ingest remote sensing information and distribute a common mission operating picture, apply ad-hoc communication networks to facilitate timely information sharing and communication of changes, vehicle-to-vehicle and onboard autonomy technologies ensure the safety and resiliency of operations, and apply NASA’s UAS traffic management system (UTM) as a public safety UAS Service Supplier (USS) to access and coordinate use of the airspace by both manned and unmanned operations. The potential benefits of STEReO include: standardized, cross-platform communication means increased interoperability and ease of cooperation/collaboration, increased situation awareness and common operating picture allow for earlier detection and decision making, and scalable to size and complexity of environment, operations, and mission objectives. This flyer gives an overview of the STEReO project, to be used a handout given to atteendees of the ARMD Wildfire Management Workshop.

traffic management↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

STEReO Combining NASA Technologies and Partnerships to Transform Current-day Emergency Response Operations

STEReO brings together several technologies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), Autonomy, Communications, Human Factors, and Domain Expertise & Tools, aimed at providing scalability and flexibility, as well as operational resiliency to dynamic changes during a disaster event. Some of the concepts STEReO explores are: collaborative tools to ingest remote sensing information and distribute a common mission operating picture, apply ad-hoc communication networks to facilitate timely information sharing and communication of changes, vehicle-to-vehicle and onboard autonomy technologies ensure the safety and resiliency of operations, and apply NASA’s UAS traffic management system (UTM) as a public safety UAS Service Supplier (USS) to access and coordinate use of the airspace by both manned and unmanned operations. The potential benefits of STEReO include: standardized, cross-platform communication means increased interoperability and ease of cooperation/collaboration, increased situation awareness and common operating picture allow for earlier detection and decision making, and scalable to size and complexity of environment, operations, and mission objectives. This presentation serves as a status update to the activities within the STEReO project, detailing progress made in the past year, to attendees of the Tactical Fire Remote Sensing Advisory Committee (TFRSAC) spring workshop. Presentation includes two videos which are included as downloadable files, video play time for NASTA_adsb_+_UAS_v2.mp4 1 min 55 secs, for NASTA_eng315_v2.mp4 1 min 34 secs.

emergency response operations↗

NASA NTRS2021

STEReO AIAA 2021

STEReO brings together several technologies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), Autonomy, Communications, Human Factors, and Domain Expertise & Tools, aimed at providing scalability and flexibility, as well as operational resiliency to dynamic changes during a disaster event. Some of the concepts STEReO explores are: collaborative tools to ingest remote sensing information and distribute a common mission data set, apply ad-hoc communication networks to facilitate timely information sharing and communication of changes, vehicle-to-vehicle and onboard autonomy technologies ensure the safety and resiliency of operations, and apply NASA’s UAS traffic management system (UTM) as a public safety UAS Service Supplier (USS) to access and coordinate use of the airspace by both manned and unmanned operations. The potential benefits of STEReO include: standardized, cross-platform communication means increased interoperability and ease of cooperation/collaboration, increased situation awareness to assist in earlier detection and decision making, and scalable to size and complexity of environment, operations, and mission objectives. This presentation gives a high-level overview of the STEReO concept, what we have done so far, and a preview of what's to come.

UAS vehicles↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

STEReO: combining NASA technologies and partnerships to transform current-day emergency response operations

emergency response operations↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations

STEReO brings together several technologies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), Autonomy, Communications, Human Factors, and Domain Expertise & Tools, aimed at providing scalability and flexibility, as well as operational resiliency to dynamic changes during a disaster event. Some of the concepts STEReO explores are: collaborative tools to ingest remote sensing information and distribute a common mission operating picture, apply ad-hoc communication networks to facilitate timely information sharing and communication of changes, vehicle-to-vehicle and onboard autonomy technologies ensure the safety and resiliency of operations, and apply NASA’s UAS traffic management system (UTM) as a public safety UAS Service Supplier (USS) to access and coordinate use of the airspace by both manned and unmanned operations. The potential benefits of STEReO include: standardized, cross-platform communication means increased interoperability and ease of cooperation/collaboration, increased situation awareness and common operating picture allow for earlier detection and decision making, and scalable to size and complexity of environment, operations, and mission objectives. This poster gives an informational overview of the STEReO project to attendees of the imaginAviation event.

emergency response operations↗

NASA NTRS2012

Simulation and Flight Test Capability for Testing Prototype Sense and Avoid System Elements

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) and The MITRE Corporation (MITRE) have developed, and successfully demonstrated, an integrated simulation-to-flight capability for evaluating sense and avoid (SAA) system elements. This integrated capability consists of a MITRE developed fast-time computer simulation for evaluating SAA algorithms, and a NASA LaRC surrogate unmanned aircraft system (UAS) equipped to support hardware and software in-the-loop evaluation of SAA system elements (e.g., algorithms, sensors, architecture, communications, autonomous systems), concepts, and procedures. The fast-time computer simulation subjects algorithms to simulated flight encounters/ conditions and generates a fitness report that records strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance. Reviewed algorithms (and their fitness report) are then transferred to NASA LaRC where additional (joint) airworthiness evaluations are performed on the candidate SAA system-element configurations, concepts, and/or procedures of interest; software and hardware components are integrated into the Surrogate UAS research systems; and flight safety and mission planning activities are completed. Onboard the Surrogate UAS, candidate SAA system element configurations, concepts, and/or procedures are subjected to flight evaluations and in-flight performance is monitored. The Surrogate UAS, which can be controlled remotely via generic Ground Station uplink or automatically via onboard systems, operates with a NASA Safety Pilot/Pilot in Command onboard to permit safe operations in mixed airspace with manned aircraft. An end-to-end demonstration of a typical application of the capability was performed in non-exclusionary airspace in October 2011; additional research, development, flight testing, and evaluation efforts using this integrated capability are planned throughout fiscal year 2012 and 2013.

Howell, Charles T.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Validating an Air Traffic Management Concept of Operation Using Statistical Modeling

Validating a concept of operation for a complex, safety-critical system (like the National Airspace System) is challenging because of the high dimensionality of the controllable parameters and the infinite number of states of the system. In this paper, we use statistical modeling techniques to explore the behavior of a conflict detection and resolution algorithm designed for the terminal airspace. These techniques predict the robustness of the system simulation to both nominal and off-nominal behaviors within the overall airspace. They also can be used to evaluate the output of the simulation against recorded airspace data. Additionally, the techniques carry with them a mathematical value of the worth of each prediction-a statistical uncertainty for any robustness estimate. Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) is the process of quantitative characterization and ultimately a reduction of uncertainties in complex systems. UQ is important for understanding the influence of uncertainties on the behavior of a system and therefore is valuable for design, analysis, and verification and validation. In this paper, we apply advanced statistical modeling methodologies and techniques on an advanced air traffic management system, namely the Terminal Tactical Separation Assured Flight Environment (T-TSAFE). We show initial results for a parameter analysis and safety boundary (envelope) detection in the high-dimensional parameter space. For our boundary analysis, we developed a new sequential approach based upon the design of computer experiments, allowing us to incorporate knowledge from domain experts into our modeling and to determine the most likely boundary shapes and its parameters. We carried out the analysis on system parameters and describe an initial approach that will allow us to include time-series inputs, such as the radar track data, into the analysis

Statistical emulation↗

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 NTRS2014

Assuring Ground-Based Detect and Avoid for UAS Operations

One of the goals of the Marginal Ice Zones Observations and Processes Experiment (MIZOPEX) NASA Earth science mission was to show the operational capabilities of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) when deployed on challenging missions, in difficult environments. Given the extreme conditions of the Arctic environment where MIZOPEX measurements were required, the mission opted to use a radar to provide a ground-based detect-and-avoid (GBDAA) capability as an alternate means of compliance (AMOC) with the see-and-avoid federal aviation regulation. This paper describes how GBDAA safety assurance was provided by interpreting and applying the guidelines in the national policy for UAS operational approval. In particular, we describe how we formulated the appropriate safety goals, defined the processes and procedures for system safety, identified and assembled the relevant safety verification evidence, and created an operational safety case in compliance with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements. To the best of our knowledge, the safety case, which was ultimately approved by the FAA, is the first successful example of non-military UAS operations using GBDAA in the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS), and, therefore, the first nonmilitary application of the safety case concept in this context.

Detect-and-Avoid↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Informing New Concepts for UAS and Autonomous System Safety Management using Disaster Management and First Responder Scenarios

As emerging flight operations become more prevalent and increasingly automated and distributed, the capabilities for managing safety of vehicles and operations will also need to evolve. To address this challenge, the National Academies has envisioned an In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) capability for a wide range of aviation operations including current commercial operations as well as new entrants envisioned with advanced air mobility (AAM). The suite of IASMS services, functions, and capabilities (SFCs) would be implemented in a federated approach and would address trends as well as individual operations. Through predictive modeling and data analysis, IASMS is envisioned to identify arising risks so that they can be mitigated, in-time, before a safety incident occurs. IASMS and its requisite set of SFCs must leverage a wide range of information to perform. To better understand these new needs, FSF worked with the aviation and humanitarian communities to develop and validate scenarios that include traditional aviation operations and UAS operations intermingled as they are deployed for disaster management and first responder (DMFR) situations. The three scenarios developed include: • Post Natural disaster response, such as a hurricane, involving multiple parties utilizing traditional aviation and UAS to support rescue operations, surveil damage, and locate survivors needing assistance. • Wildfire fighting in remote locations with traditional aircraft for transport and fire-retardant delivery combined with UAS for surveillance of fire locations as well as to track individual firefighter locations. • Medical Operations and AAM in Urban Environments including passenger-carrying helicopters and AAM vehicles, medical missions (such as transport of radio-pharmaceuticals), and other UAS delivery operations (such as the delivery of defibrillators). Each scenario was developed and validated by representatives with expertise in humanitarian operations, urban and rural emergency response, air traffic management, UAS operations, and traditional flight operations. The scenario definitions address roles and responsibilities of individual actors, the appropriate utilization of UAS, and the actions taken by those actors to appropriately manage risks associated with the mission and environment. The risks to aviation traffic and to people on the ground explored included potential risks arising from incompatibilities in calculating reference altitudes (eg, differing uses of AGL, MSL, barometric, or GPS-derived values), loss of command and control (C2) communications, rapid changes in weather and winds, and physical interference. For each risk, IASMS SFCs were postulated in the context of monitoring services, risk assessment capabilities, and identifying appropriate mitigation strategies. The identified SFC capabilities were envisioned from known services postulated for IASMS and for UTM. For these unique environments, IASMS SFCs are needed to address conditions such as hazardous payloads, micro-climates and urban canyons, and the need to keep uninvolved air traffic out of the area where DMFR operations are being conducted. The second phase of analysis focused on inferring the specific information needs and the SFCs for IASMS, utilizing a structure of 16 information classes to organize requirements. For each of the risks identified in the workshops, it was postulated what data sources would be necessary to monitor critical aspects of the risk (eg, surrounding air traffic, ground population, terrain, etc). to be directly measured as well as data that would be derived, which implies additional SFCs for different actors to understand what information would likely be exchanged between parties. For an IASMS to be effective, additional research is needed to develop the advanced algorithms that can address the increasingly autonomous and complex operations in differing environments and to develop means of identifying unknown risks. Looking at these scenarios highlighted a number of research issues. These include the ability to quickly "cordon off" airspace thru temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) or other means, developing clear definitions to enable automation-based algorithms for prioritizing operations, defining airspace density metrics, standardization of altitude reporting, and establishing a basis for safety data metrics definition and collection. This paper seeks to outline the development of an IASMS in the context of the DMFR scenarios and resulting demonstrations. Utilizing this contextual approach, NASA will generate recommendations for an assured safety framework for AAM operations that enables AAM operations to safely access the NAS.

In Time Aviation Safety Management System↗

NASA NTRS2020

Strategic Deconfliction Performance: Results and Analysis from the NASA UTM Technical Capability Level 4 Demonstration

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) refers to the service-based, cooperative approach to the management of small UAS in the National Airspace System that is safe, scalable, and fair. UTM provides the means to manage the airspace in a complementary manner that does not burden the current air traffic control workforce or infrastructure but allows the Air Navigation Service Provider to maintain its regulatory and operational authority of the airspace. A key feature of UTM is the ability to provide operators the means to strategically deconflict operations from others in the airspace through the digital exchange of information via supporting services. Through this approach, the four-dimensional operation volumes that encompass the intent of operators in a given area are discoverable and can be used for airspace awareness as well as planning conflict free operations that account for and avoid other operations. In certain cases, it is also possible to negotiate volume intersections for shared airspace use without the need to re-plan. In the NASA UTM concept, strategic deconfliction is the first layer of three in the overall conflict management model. The three layers of the conflict management model, which follow the International Civil Aviation Organization’s scheme [ICAO 2005] are: strategic conflict management, separate provision, and collision avoidance. In UTM, the strategic layer mostly occurs prior to departure, but is applicable to en route operations with sufficient planning horizon. The initial requirements for a strategic deconfliction capability within UTM are defined in a NASA publication [Rios 2018]. Within the concept and implementation of service-provided strategic deconfliction is the notion of priority. It is understood that there are instances in which an operation requires a priority designation within the UTM system and special handling accordingly to provide situation awareness and facilitate appropriate responses from other airspace users. Examples of situations requiring priority designation include: when an operator declares an emergency due to problems with the vehicle or its immediate surroundings; operations that are in support of certain organizations (e.g., public safety and first responders); or special missions that also require priority use of airspace (e.g., emergency medical deliveries). UAS Volume Reservations (UVRs) also relate to the topic of priority in the sense that the airspace that the volume encompasses has a different status or classification in which unassociated operations must vacate if inside, or avoid if outside, through strategic deconfliction with the volume. Operations that are specially permitted to access the UVR area are typically assigned priority status given the nature of their mission and their associated credentials. The ability to perform strategic deconfliction, handle certain operations with a priority distinction, and establish UVRs that are communicated throughout the UTM system, is predicated on an architecture that has been established through an evolutionary process in response to close collaboration with stakeholders from government and industry. Another important and influential aspect of these capabilities and architecture is the live, distributed flight tests that have been conducted across the Technical Capability Levels (TCLs) that culminated with a set of complex tests performed as part of TCL4 [Rios 2020]. The TCL4 flight test involved two FAA-designated UAS test sites building teams to collaborate with NASA’s UTM Project on the execution of several detailed, small UAS scenarios in urban environments.

conflict management↗

NASA NTRS2016

Oceanic Flights and Airspace: Improving Efficiency by Trajectory-Based Operations

Oceanic operations suffer from multiple inefficiencies, including pre-departure planning that does not adequately consider uncertainty in the proposed trajectory, restrictions on the routes that a flight operator can choose for an oceanic crossing, time-consuming processes and procedures for amending en route trajectories, and difficulties exchanging data between Flight Information Regions (FIRs). These inefficiencies cause aircraft to fly suboptimal trajectories, burning fuel and time that could be conserved. A concept to support integration of existing and emerging capabilities and concepts is needed to transition to an airspace system that employs Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) to improve efficiency and safety in oceanic operations. This paper describes such a concept and the results of preliminary activities to evaluate the concept, including a stakeholder feedback activity, user needs analysis, and high level benefits analysis.

Fernandes, Alicia Borgman↗

NASA NTRS2018

A Component-Level Model of Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B)

Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) is being employed in numerous peer-to-peer initiatives attempting to expand the capacity of the National Airspace System (NAS) or enable mixed operations of manned and unmanned vehicles. Safety assessments of these initiatives rely, in part, on modeling the accuracy of ADS-B in reporting the position and direction of an ownship and surrounding traffic. Frequently, these initiatives utilize a position uncertainty model that applies a reported ADS-B estimation position uncertainty (EPU) value to a Rayleigh distribution and uses a Gauss-Markov random walk to add error to the ADS-B output of a vehicle. This model of ADS-B state error is easy to implement and apply to numerous problems. However, it has a couple of draw-backs. First, the ADS-B state errors are equally probable in all directions. This is a good assumption in situations where aircraft maneuvering is not constrained. However, in situations where the aircraft maneuvering is constrained such as landing, the error distribution is likely to exhibit directionality and the non-directional model may skew results especially when assessing very low probabilities (e.g., 10(exp -9)) of catastrophic encounters. Second, the model does not account for processing latency in the receiving aircraft. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) recently examined the feasibility of decreasing the spacing of aircraft on parallel approaches to runways separated by as little as 700 feet. For Monte-Carlo analysis using a high-fidelity simulation of a large transport, LaRC started with a Gauss-Markov model of ADS-B error but then developed a component level model of ADS-B error to increase the fidelity of results.

Madden, Michael M.↗

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 NTRS2009

Formal Methods Applications in Air Transportation

The U.S. air transportation system is the most productive in the world, moving far more people and goods than any other. It is also the safest system in the world, thanks in part to its venerable air traffic control system. But as demand for air travel continues to grow, the air traffic control system s aging infrastructure and labor-intensive procedures are impinging on its ability to keep pace with demand. And that impinges on the growth of our economy. Air traffic control modernization has long held the promise of a more efficient air transportation system. Part of NASA s current mission is to develop advanced automation and operational concepts that will expand the capacity of our national airspace system while still maintaining its excellent record for safety. It is a challenging mission, as efforts to modernize have, for decades, been hamstrung by the inability to assure safety to the satisfaction of system operators, system regulators, and/or the traveling public. In this talk, we ll provide a brief history of air traffic control, focusing on the tension between efficiency and safety assurance, and the promise of formal methods going forward.

Farley, Todd↗

NASA NTRS2006

Application of the H-Mode, a Design and Interaction Concept for Highly Automated Vehicles, to Aircraft

Driven by increased safety, efficiency, and airspace capacity, automation is playing an increasing role in aircraft operations. As aircraft become increasingly able to autonomously respond to a range of situations with performance surpassing human operators, we are compelled to look for new methods that help us understand their use and guide their design using new forms of automation and interaction. We propose a novel design metaphor to aid the conceptualization, design, and operation of highly-automated aircraft. Design metaphors transfer meaning from common experiences to less familiar applications or functions. A notable example is the "Desktop metaphor" for manipulating files on a computer. This paper describes a metaphor for highly automated vehicles known as the H-metaphor and a specific embodiment of the metaphor known as the H-mode as applied to aircraft. The fundamentals of the H-metaphor are reviewed followed by an overview of an exploratory usability study investigating human-automation interaction issues for a simple H-mode implementation. The envisioned application of the H-mode concept to aircraft is then described as are two planned evaluations.

Goodrich, Kenneth H.↗