Initial Study of An Effective Fast-time Simulation Platform for Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management

Abstract

Small unmanned aircraft systems are envisioned to play a major role in surveilling critical assets, collecting data, and delivering goods. Large scale operations are expected to happen in low altitude airspace in the near future, where many static and dynamic constraints exist. High sensitivity to wind and high maneuverability are unique characteristics of these vehicles, which bring great challenges to effective system evaluations and mandate such a simulation platform different from existing simulations that were built for manned air traffic system and large unmanned fixed-wing aircraft. NASA's Unmanned aircraft system Traffic Management (UTM) research initiative focuses on enabling fair, safe, and efficient unmanned aircraft system operations in the future. In order to help define requirements and policies for a safe and efficient UTM system to accommodate a large amount of unmanned aerial vehicle operations, it is necessary to develop a fast-time simulation platform that can effectively evaluate policies and concepts, and perform parameter studies in a close-to-reality environment. This work analyzed the impacts of some key factors and demonstrated the importance of these factors in a successful UTM fast-time simulation platform. Preliminary experiments were also conducted to show potentail applications of such a platform. I. IntroductionThe volume of small Unmanned Aircraft System(sUAS) operations is expected to increase dramatically in the near future. 1 Potential sUAS applications include, but not limited to, search and rescue, inspection and surveillance, aerial photography and video, precision agriculture, and parcel delivery. According to the marketing analysis 2 , the global small UAS market is anticipated to hit 10 billion by 2020. FAA also forecasted that over 7 million sUASs will be sold annually by 2020. 1 The sUAS's low operational altitude, small size, and envisioned scale of operations make Unmanned aircraft system Traffic Management (UTM) quite different from conventional aviation traffic management. In the low altitude airspace, besides fast-changing wind conditions, restricted areas, manned aircraft/helicopters, and tall buildings/terrain impose many constraints in sUAS operations. The sensitive trajectory response and high maneuverability make sUAS different from manned or unmanned large-size fixed-wing aircraft and dramatically change the way traffic system operates. These characteristics and the predicted large scale operations 1 present great challenges in managing safe and efficient traffic operations in low altitude airspace.NASA's UTM research initiative 3, 4 is researching and defining requirements and policies for the UTM system to ensure fair, safe, and efficient UAS operations in the future. In order to investigate the impacts of various device parameters, traffic system rules and policies, operational schedules, and wind conditions, especially in dense operations, it is necessary to build an effective fast-time simulation platform that can incorporate different parameters, rules, ...

A Simulation Framework For Fast Design Space Exploration Of Unmanned Air System Traffic Management Policies

“…Recent works from NASA [1][2] identified the need for simulation environments to study the most efficient low altitude airspace organization and the capacity of the low altitude airspace to safely accommodate the high demands derived from commercial use of this airpace by sUAS. Those works do not address the relationship between airspace and the required communication infrastructure capacity to safely and efficiently handle the traffic.…”

A Throughput Based Capacity Metric for Low-Altitude Airspace

“…that are not needed in low-altitude UTM questions of traffic behavior and capacity. The fast-time Fe3 simulator developed by NASA Ames [28] provides the capability of statistically analyzing the high-density, high-fidelity, and low-altitude traffic system. It can be used for effectively evaluating policies and concepts, and performing parameter studies in a higher-fidelity environment like the one in which we are interested.…”

Fe3: An Evaluation Tool for Low-Altitude Air Traffic Operations

“…5 It's unlikely that stakeholders will have decades to evolve the traffic system and mitigate all challenges without significantly impeding the growth of UTM and UAM operations. Previous work 6 evaluated existing tools [7][8][9][10][11] and suggested that a fast-time simulation evaluation capability is needed to study the high-density and low-altitude air traffic system.…”