The U.S. commercial space launch industry has changed considerably since the enactment of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. FAA is required to license or permit commercial space launches, but to allow the space tourism industry to develop, the act prohibited FAA from regulating crew and spaceflight participant safety before 2012—a moratorium that was later extended but will now expire on September 30, 2015. Since October 2014, there have been three mishaps involving FAA licensed or permitted launches.

美聯邦航空廳(Federal Aviation Administration)의 航空機 製作檢査 制度의 現況

This paper provides a survey of existing research on agent-based approaches to transportation and traffic management. A framework for describing and assessing this work will be presented and systematically applied. We are mainly adopting a logistical perspective, thus focusing on freight transportation. However, when relevant, work of traffic and transport of people will be considered. A general conclusion from our study is that agent-based approaches seem very suitable for this domain, but that this still needs to be verified by more deployed system.

An Analysis of Agent-Based Approaches to Transport Logistics

Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) reachability analysis is an important formal verification method for guaranteeing performance and safety properties of dynamical systems; it has been applied to many small-scale systems in the past decade. Its advantages include compatibility with general nonlinear system dynamics, formal treatment of bounded disturbances, and the availability of well-developed numerical tools. The main challenge is addressing its exponential computational complexity with respect to the number of state variables. In this tutorial, we present an overview of basic HJ reachability theory and provide instructions for using the most recent numerical tools, including an efficient GPU-parallelized implementation of a Level Set Toolbox for computing reachable sets. In addition, we review some of the current work in high-dimensional HJ reachability to show how the dimensionality challenge can be alleviated via various general theoretical and application-specific insights.

Hamilton-Jacobi reachability: A brief overview and recent advances

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) - defined as safe and efficient air traffic operations in a metropolitan area for manned aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems - is being researched and developed by industry, academia, and government. Significant resources have been invested toward cultivating an ecosystem for Urban Air Mobility that includes manufacturers of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, builders of takeoff and landing areas, and researchers of the airspace integration concepts, technologies, and procedures needed to conduct Urban Air Mobility operations safely and efficiently alongside other airspace users. This paper provides high-level descriptions of both emergent and early expanded operational concepts for Urban Air Mobility that NASA is developing. The scope of this work is defined in terms of missions, aircraft, airspace, and hazards. Past and current Urban Air Mobility operations are also reviewed, and the considerations for the data exchange architecture and communication, navigation, and surveillance requirements are also discussed. This paper will serve as a starting point to develop a framework for NASA's Urban Air Mobility airspace integration research and development efforts with partners and stakeholders that could include fast-time simulations, human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulations, and flight demonstrations.

/pdf/urban-air-mobility-airspace-integration-concepts-and-4aesqnudxl.pdf

Urban Air Mobility Airspace Integration Concepts and Considerations

Many applications of small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) have been envisioned. These include surveillance of key assets such as pipelines, rail, or electric wires, deliveries, search and rescue, traffic monitoring, videography, and precision agriculture. These operations are likely to occur in the same airspace in presence of many static and dynamic constraints such as airports, and high wind areas. Therefore, small UAS, typically 55 pounds and below, operations need to be managed to ensure safety and efficiency of operations is maintained. This paper will describe the Concept of Operations (ConOps) for NASA's UAS Traffic Management (UTM) research initiative. The UTM ConOps is focused on safely enabling large-scale small UAS (sUAS) operations in low altitude airspace. The UTM construct supports large-scale visual line of sight and beyond visual line of sight operations. It is based on two primary mantras: (1) flexibility where possible and structure where necessary (2) a risk-based approach where geographical needs and use case indicate the airspace performance requirements. Preliminary stakeholder feedback and initial UTM tests conducted by NASA show promise of UTM to enable large-scale low altitude UAS operations safely.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190000370/downloads/20190000370.pdf

Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) Concept of Operations

UAS Traffic Management (UTM) Concept of Operations to Safely Enable Low Altitude Flight Operations

Predicted air traffic increases over the next 25 years may create a significant capacity problem that the United States' National Airspace System will be unable to accommodate. The concept of introducing automated separation assurance was proposed to help solve this problem. However, the introduction of such a concept involves a fundamental paradigm shift in which automation is allowed to perform safety-critical tasks that today are strictly the air traffic controllers' domain. Moving toward automated air traffic control, therefore, requires a careful and thorough investigation. As part of an ongoing series, three human-in-the-loop simulation studies were conducted at the NASA Ames Research Center with the overarching goal of determining whether the automated separation assurance concept can be integrated into air traffic control operations in an acceptable and safe manner. These studies investigated a range of issues including the proper levels of automation for given capacity targets, off-nominal operat...

Toward Automated Air Traffic Control—Investigating a Fundamental Paradigm Shift in Human/Systems Interaction

NextGen air/ground operations with ground-based automated separation assurance have been initially evaluated with controllers and pilots in the loop at the NASA Ames Research Center. Nominal and off-nominal situations were investigated in a highly automated environment, under 2x and 3x traffic densities. The paper starts with a review of previous simulations on nominal operations, followed by a description of the underlying concept and the roles and responsibilities of controllers, pilots, and automation. The core of this paper discusses a simulation of air/ground operations, in which controllers and pilots were confronted with a challenging situation: Ground-based separation automation was managing the trajectories for all aircraft at 2x and 3x traffic densities without controller involvement. Routine and off-nominal events were carefully scripted that caused short-term conflicts, simulated emergency situations or required trajectory negotiations. It was found that the concept shows great promise to enabling the en route capacity increases targeted for NextGen. The medium-term conflict detection and resolution automation coupled with data link was able to solve over 98% of all conflicts during nominal operations, with a significantly higher success rate at 2x (>99 %) than at 3x. More than 95% of uplinked trajectories were acceptable to the flight crews. While controller workload was low in general and they were able to resolve over 75% of scripted off-nominal short-term conflicts, many issues were identified that need to be further addressed in the area of short-term conflict detection and resolution.

/pdf/initial-evaluation-of-nextgen-air-ground-operations-with-rl9ssoefer.pdf

Initial Evaluation of NextGen Air/Ground Operations with Ground-Based Automated Separation Assurance

In order to meet the anticipated future demand for air travel, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is investigating a new concept of operations known as Distributed Air-Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM). Under the En Route Free Maneuvering component of DAG-TM, appropriately equipped autonomous aircraft self separate from other autonomous aircraft and from managed aircraft that continue to fly under today s Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). Controllers provide separation services between IFR aircraft and assign traffic flow management constraints to all aircraft. To address concept feasibility issues pertaining to integrated air/ground operations at various traffic levels, NASA Ames and Langley Research Centers conducted a joint human-in-the-loop experiment. Professional airline pilots and air traffic controllers flew a total of 16 scenarios under four conditions: mixed autonomous/managed operations at three traffic levels and a baseline all-managed condition at the lowest traffic level. These scenarios included en route flights and descents to a terminal area meter fix in airspace modeled after the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Pilots of autonomous aircraft met controller assigned meter fix constraints with high success. Separation violations by subject pilots did not appear to vary with traffic level and were mainly attributable to software errors and procedural lapses. Controller workload was lower for mixed flight conditions, even at higher traffic levels. Pilot workload was deemed acceptable under all conditions. Controllers raised several safety concerns, most of which pertained to the occurrence of near-term conflicts between autonomous and managed aircraft. These issues are being addressed through better compatibility between air and ground systems and refinements to air and ground procedures.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20050215572/downloads/20050215572.pdf

Thomas Prevot

Papers

Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) Concept of Operations

UAS Traffic Management (UTM) Concept of Operations to Safely Enable Low Altitude Flight Operations

Toward Automated Air Traffic Control—Investigating a Fundamental Paradigm Shift in Human/Systems Interaction

Initial Evaluation of NextGen Air/Ground Operations with Ground-Based Automated Separation Assurance

Joint NASA Ames/Langley Experimental Evaluation of Integrated Air/Ground Operations for En Route Free Maneuvering