NASA took the first step toward developing this system – the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) System – in September 2014 when it issued a federal notice soliciting partners in the multi-year effort to build a series of UTM systems of increasing complexity.
While it may seem like pure science fiction to many, the UTM construct will be a low-altitude adaptation of the autonomous concepts emerging at altitudes above 1,200 feet – separation management, scheduling, demand/capacity imbalance, trajectory definition, contingency management, weather data, and others. The UTM will allow operators to create a “geo-fenced” area, defined by GPS coordinates, in which movements and behaviors can be programmed and monitored.
NASA’s vision for safe, autonomous systems operations anticipates the changes that increasing autonomy will bring not only to the operation of vehicles, but also to the very business models that drive aviation.
The goal of the UTM, a technology that will ultimately be handed over to the FAA, is to find a way to safely manage the simultaneous low-altitude use of unmanned aircraft by multiple users. Early versions will likely involve some degree of human oversight to approve flight plans and monitor flights, but the long-term vision is of a self-monitoring system that knows what is in the low altitude airspace, and where – and how to keep all these aircraft moving safely and efficiently.
These goals aren’t any different from the goals NASA and the FAA share for higher altitudes. “We’re trying to help the FAA reach its NextGen goals and have very efficient, integrated trajectories from gate to gate that can operate through very complex scenarios and airspace,” said Pearce.
NASA investigators have developed several algorithmic tools that can help operators to predict and avoid delays and safety incidents, and last year the agency launched an ambitious project to evaluate how many of these new autonomous monitoring tools interact with each other in real time: the Shadow Mode Assessment Using Realistic Technologies for the National Airspace System (SMART-NAS) for Safe Trajectory-Based Operations. The SMART-NAS project will function as a simulator operating in “shadow mode” – using real-time data feeds from public and private partners in the aviation industry to examine how existing and developing tools operate together.
The increasing autonomy of aircraft, and the resulting burdens it will add to the airspace, will in turn make it necessary for a future version of the SMART-NAS to come out of shadow mode and operate in the real world, said Pearce. “You can envision a future,” he said, “where you’ve got a lot of UAS, maybe autonomous personal air vehicles and other things, operating at the same time. They have very different performance characteristics,” he said. “They’re flying different missions. And now the airspace is a much more complex environment than it is today. You’re probably going to need some autonomy in order to get beyond some of the limitations in the ability of humans to handle complexity.”
Several companies, such as Terrafugia, above, are developing “flying cars,” pointing toward a future with less-skilled operators flying aircraft. Tearfugia image
NASA’s vision for safe, autonomous systems operations anticipates the changes that increasing autonomy will bring not only to the operation of vehicles, but also to the very business models that drive aviation. A reliable, decision-capable artificial intelligence, for example, could allow operators to reduce manning requirements, even enabling single-pilot operations; if a sensor array indicates the pilot has become incapacitated, an autonomous system could step in to complete the flight. Assured autonomy will enable on-demand flights of either passengers or cargo, perhaps priced on a sliding scale, much as utility companies are now able to price electricity to match supply and demand.
Such a future may seem remote – but safe, system-wide autonomy, like many of the aeronautical innovations that preceded it, will probably be regarded as implausible until the day it finally arrives. “We need a whole new set of tools,” said Pearce. But little by little, as they lay the groundwork for a smart, self-monitoring national airspace, NASA investigators are sharpening those tools.
This article first appeared in the NACA/NASA: Celebrating a Century of Innovation, Exploration, and Discovery in Flight and Space publication.