Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Generic Urban Air Mobility”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

12 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Generic Urban Air Mobility Simulation

This research presents a simulation framework for autonomous research for a UAM vehicle using the NASA Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology Lift+Cruise concept vehicle. Our research results were produced using the open-source, six degree of freedom, rigid-body, nonlinear generic urban air mobility (GUAM) simulation. The intent of this paper is to demonstrate the GUAM simulation and a series of Challenge Problems that our researchers have posed to the broader autonomous vehicle research community. Our team has developed the GUAM simulation for the express purpose of providing a high-fidelity transition vehicle dynamics model to foster collaboration and algorithm performance comparison across research teams. In this paper, we demonstrate some of the autonomous flight research challenges and some of our current approaches to tackling basic autonomous flight tasks (e.g., trajectory following, stationary and moving obstacle avoidance). Additionally, we propose some flight metrics to assess autonomous algorithm performance while accomplishing these basic autonomous tasks.

autonomous flight↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Systems Approach to AI Model Integration and Performance Evaluation for the Generic UAM Simulation Framework

This paper introduces py-guam, an open-source experimentation framework developed for the NASA Generic Urban Air Mobility simulation (GUAM) environment, facilitating the integration and evaluation of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. We present a systems approach which enables the seamless incorporation of data-driven models, including off-nominal and failure state detection, into the GUAM’s Cognitive Architecture (CA). The framework supports customizable experimentation parameters, derives Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) from UL 4600 safety case analyses, and employs rapid UAM simulations to assess AI impacts on flight performance across diverse scenarios. Through comprehensive testing and validation experiments, we demonstrate GUAM’s capability to enhance safety and efficiency in urban air mobility operations. Additionally, the open-source nature of py-guam fosters community collaboration, ensuring continuous improvement and adaptability to evolving technological advancements. This work establishes a robust tool for developing and testing AI-driven urban air mobility (UAM) systems, advancing the safety and reliability of autonomous urban air vehicles.

Artificial Intelligence↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Rapid Aero Modeling of a Lift+Cruise UAM Configuration for Stability and Control Using Overset Grid CFD

This talk will address some aspects of an effort to develop both static and dynamic stability and control derivatives of a generic Lift+Cruise Urban Air Mobility vehicle. In particular, the use of NASA overset grid CFD packages OVERFLOW and Chimera Grid Tools allowed for rapid grid and solution generation while varying many database factors. Approach details include coarse gridding and control effectors, rotor disk modeling, convergence evaluation, and parallel execution on a midrange compute resource. A brief *description of the Rapid Aero Modeling (RAM) approach, including design of experiments and response surface modeling, will be given, and recent simulations of powered and unpowered dynamic multisine maneuvers will be presented.

Overset Grid CFD↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Dynamic Vehicle Assessment for Intelligent Contingency Management of Urban Air Mobility Vehicles

New algorithms will be required to ensure passenger and bystander safety during the expected era of autonomous urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft. This paper examines an approach for assessing the vehicle capability to fly itself and to complete a mission safely. The concepts combine elements of system identification, adaptive control, flight dynamics, envelope predictions, and handling qualities, as well as human pilot intuition. The approach is applied to a simulation of a generic distributed electric propulsion urban air mobility-type aircraft, which was developed under the NASA Transformational Tools and Technologies (TTT) project, Autonomous Systems / Intelligent Contingency Management subproject.

flight envelope↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Dynamic Vehicle Assessment for Intelligent Contingency Management for Urban Air Mobility Vehicles

New algorithms will be required to ensure passenger and bystander safety during the expected era of autonomous urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft. This paper examines an approach for assessing the vehicle capability to fly itself and to complete a mission safely. The concepts combine elements of system identification, adaptive control, flight dynamics, envelope predictions, and handling qualities, as well as human pilot intuition. The approach is applied to a simulation of a generic distributed electric propulsion urban air mobility-type aircraft, which was developed under the NASA Transformational Tools and Technologies (TTT) project, Autonomous Systems / Intelligent Contingency Management subproject.

flight envelope prediction↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Operational Analysis of Vertiport Surface Topology

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concepts and technologies are being developed to safely enable operations of small, electric-powered or hybrid, pilot-optional, vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) passenger and cargo aircraft at vertiport facilities in urban and suburban environments. It is likely that many of the highest demand locations for vertiports will be in space constrained urban environments, requiring vertiport designs to maximize throughput within a compact surface footprint. This paper presents several generic vertiport topology design approaches and evaluates their relative surface area utilization and operational efficiency under different wind constrained configurations while meeting safety driven spacing constraints derived from heliport design standards and subject matter expert interviews.

Urban air mobility↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Urban Air Mobility Conflict Resolution: Centralized or Decentralized?

This work begins to address one of the critical questions in the urban air mobility and small unmanned aircraft communities: Should the en-route conflict resolution function in an urban air mobility traffic system be centralized or decentralized? Three conflict resolution architectures are modeled and analyzed: centralized, decentralized with uniform rules, and decentralized with mixed rules. This study compares these architectures and investigates their robustness to communication and state information errors in terms of safety and efficiency metrics. Experiments are conducted using a high-fidelity Monte Carlo traffic simulator and a generic set of traffic scenarios with increasing traffic density. When no errors were modeled, the centralized architecture marginally outperformed the decentralized architecture. However, performance of the centralized architecture was found to be adversely affected by the modeled input errors to a greater degree than was the decentralized architecture. Performance of the centralized architecture also was degraded significantly by the modeled transmission errors of the centralized resolution maneuvers. In the decentralized architecture, uniform rules outperformed mixed rules because, in the mixed rules case, system safety performance was undermined and dominated by the poor performers.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) traffic system↗
NASA NTRS2022

NASA Concept Vehicles and the Engineering of Advanced Air Mobility Aircraft

NASA is conducting investigations in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aircraft and operations. AAM missions are characterised by ranges below 300 nm, including rural and urban operations, passenger carrying as well as cargo delivery. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a subset of AAM and is the segment that is projected to have the most economic benefit and be the most difficult to develop. The NASA Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology project is developing UAM VTOL aircraft designs that can be used to focus and guide research activities in support of aircraft development for emerging aviation markets. These NASA concept vehicles encompass relevant UAM features and technologies, including propulsion architectures, highly efficient yet quiet rotors, and aircraft aerodynamic performance and interactions. The configurations adopted are generic, intentionally different in appearance and design detail from prominent industry arrangements. Already these UAM concept aircraft have been used in numerous engineering investigations, including work on meeting safety requirements, achieving good handling qualities, and reducing noise below helicopter certification levels. Focusing on the concept vehicles, observations are made regarding the engineering of Advanced Air Mobility aircraft.

eVTOL↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Data Augmentation for Intelligent Contingency Management Using Generative Adversarial Neural Networks

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques for intelligent contingency management (ICM) require that intelligent agents learn various aspects of system dynamics to create and execute contingencies. For high assurance contingency management, agents achieve the most compelling results through supervised or semi-supervised machine learning, for which agents require large datasets to learn the dynamics of the system. Unfortunately, data collection in aerospace applications can be costly, due to both time and resources. Presented work describes a framework for data augmentation of ICM databases containing training data for machine learning models. This framework populates the database with the outputs of generative adversarial network (GAN) models that were trained on flight data. Methods for evaluating the suitability of these models based on the equations of motion, as well as other physical constraints, are discussed. The paper demonstrates the utility of this database for training intelligent agents on the NASA T2 generic transport aircraft model and experimental vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) simulation model.

Generative Machine Learning↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Data Augmentation for Intelligent Contingency Management Using Generative Adversarial Neural Networks

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques for intelligent contingency management (ICM) require that intelligent agents learn various aspects of system dynamics to create and execute contingencies. For high assurance contingency management, agents achieve the most compelling results through supervised or semi-supervised machine learning, for which agents require large datasets to learn the dynamics of the system. Unfortunately, data collection in aerospace applications can be costly, due to both time and resources. Presented work describes a framework for data augmentation of ICM databases containing training data for machine learning models. This framework populates the database with the outputs of generative adversarial network (GAN) models that were trained on flight data. Methods for evaluating the suitability of these models based on the equations of motion, as well as other physical constraints, are discussed. The paper demonstrates the utility of this database for training intelligent agents on the NASA T2 generic transport aircraft model and experimental vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) simulation model.

Generative Machine Learning↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Call To Action To Engage The Community To Meet The Challenges That Must Be Tackled To Make Electrified Aircraft Propulsion Real

Technology risk reduction is essential, as it is necessary to demonstrate the potential of Electrified Aircraft Propulsion (EAP). However, more is needed for implementation. The industry is leading EAP by developing a diverse community of novel vehicles from short-haul, small, urban-focused electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) to regional air mobility (RAM) and hybrid-electric, single-aisle transport category airplanes. There are a variety of novel EAP technologies for each of these novel vehicles. And the industry is not only looking at novel technology to advance the state of the art. Instead, the industry is looking to certify these novel aircraft through their regulatory authorities, such as the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the European Union Aviation Safety Authority (EASA), Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA), and Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (National Civil Aviation Agency, ANAC), as well as other regulatory authorities. The NASA Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) project has partnered with two industry partners to advance integrated MW-class powertrain system technology demonstration that includes an assessment of their regulatory and standards gaps in their technology. The EPFD has conducted a generic regulatory gap analysis of hybrid electric engines that aligns with the industry partners’ efforts. The EPFD regulations and standards team is integrated into the industry standards community. The international industry standards community is wrestling with critical key challenges to certification. While some certification elements are proprietary, several technology elements cut across company propriety in aircraft engines (US 14 CFR Part 33 and EASA CS-E, regulations that only reflect reciprocating and turbine engines). The approach that several of these regulatory authorities have taken is to collaborate to address their challenges. The Certification Management Team (CMT) consists of the EASA, FAA, TCCA, and ANAC, and they have begun to address common questions, such as the Loss of Power Control (LOPC) for electric engines. They have reached out to the standards community to seek answers. The industry standards development organizations (SDO) have also looked ahead to address current regulations and standards gaps. The ASTM has built key committees in its ASTM F44 General Aviation Committee and F39 Aircraft Systems Committee. The SAE has established the E-40 Electric Propulsion and AE-10 High Voltage committees.

Standards↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Call To Action To Engage The Community To Meet The Challenges That Must Be Tackled To Make Electrified Aircraft Propulsion Real

Technology risk reduction is essential, as it is necessary to demonstrate the potential of Electrified Aircraft Propulsion (EAP). However, more is needed for implementation. The industry is leading EAP by developing a diverse community of novel vehicles from short-haul, small, urban-focused electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) to regional air mobility (RAM) and hybrid-electric, single-aisle transport category airplanes. There are a variety of novel EAP technologies for each of these novel vehicles. And the industry is not only looking at novel technology to advance the state of the art. Instead, the industry is looking to certify these novel aircraft through their regulatory authorities, such as the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the European Union Aviation Safety Authority (EASA), Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA), and Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (National Civil Aviation Agency, ANAC), as well as other regulatory authorities. The NASA Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) project has partnered with two industry partners to advance integrated MW-class powertrain system technology demonstration that includes an assessment of their regulatory and standards gaps in their technology. The EPFD has conducted a generic regulatory gap analysis of hybrid electric engines that aligns with the industry partners’ efforts. The EPFD regulations and standards team is integrated into the industry standards community. The international industry standards community is wrestling with critical key challenges to certification. While some certification elements are proprietary, several technology elements cut across company propriety in aircraft engines (US 14 CFR Part 33 and EASA CS-E, regulations that only reflect reciprocating and turbine engines). The approach that several of these regulatory authorities have taken is to collaborate to address their challenges. The Certification Management Team (CMT) consists of the EASA, FAA, TCCA, and ANAC, and they have begun to address common questions, such as the Loss of Power Control (LOPC) for electric engines. They have reached out to the standards community to seek answers. The industry standards development organizations (SDO) have also looked ahead to address current regulations and standards gaps. The ASTM has built key committees in its ASTM F44 General Aviation Committee and F39 Aircraft Systems Committee. The SAE has established the E-40 Electric Propulsion and AE-10 High Voltage committees.

Standards↗