Session Name: Drafting a Path to Autonomy in Aviation: From Unsettled Issues to an Industry Blueprint
Description: One of the key pieces of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) across all aircraft platforms and both urban and regional applications is the ever-increasing extent of autonomy that is being developed to support safer and more efficient aircraft operations. While automation and autonomy have been part of aviation in one form or another nearly since its inception, the expanding role of autonomy today has raised a number of questions both technically and across the regulatory spectrum. Moving from the identification of areas of uncertainty to an ongoing effort to draft a Blueprint for Autonomy, this session will look at what industry - in partnership with the Regulator - can do to bring autonomous aviation into routine operations.
Session Name: SAE Activities on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Urban Air Mobility (UAM)
Description: To fulfill its lofty mission of advancing mobility knowledge and solutions for the benefit of humanity, SAE International shares its vision for connecting UAS and UAM professionals across the globe while helping create necessary standards and peer-reviewed content within the industry.
Session Name: Weather Intelligent Navigation Data and Modeling for AAM Planning
Description: Advanced air mobility (AAM) entrants to the US national airspace system – including both unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and urban air mobility (UAM) – require a high level of weather awareness. New electric vertical lift autonomous aircraft must dynamically respond to varying external conditions such as weather, unforeseen obstacles, and traffic congestion in urban environments. NASA’s efforts in air Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management (UTM) requires real-time weather forecasting coupled with autonomous navigation in order to accommodate safe operation in their intended environments including precision navigation through uncertain weather conditions in both urban and rural settings. The WINDMAP (Weather Intelligent Navigation Data and Models for Aviation Planning) team is comprised of experts in engineering (aerospace, computer, mechanical, and robotics), sensors, atmospheric physics, aviation weather, and numerical modeling to directly address these technical and logistical challenges. This session will present efforts by team members on progress towards providing real-time weather awareness for UAM.
Session Name: Future of AAM based on Commercial and Military Partnerships
Session Name: Fleet Scalability in the Age of Autonomy
Session Name: Navigating UAM: How to assure navigation of aircraft, approaches, and vertiport site selection
Session Description: For several decades we have relied on extremely reliable and robust navigation using GPS. It has enabled more efficient global navigation, universal standards, and is on nearly every aircraft regardless of operating in visual or instrument conditions. It is essential that Urban Air Mobility leverage GPS (and GNSS that includes other systems like Galileo) to enable safe navigation to anywhere on the global and in challenging environments like cities. Low altitude flight can be challenging for GPS due to signal interference from buildings and terrain. New geospatial prediction and augmentation tools can address these issues by determining where GPS/GNSS is always good, and if it isn’t exact the times/locations/altitudes that it is within the regulatory requirements to fly even in the most challenging environments. In this presentation I will share my knowledge of the essential data needed to determine vertiport site locations, approach surfaces, and flight corridors. To increase the audiences understanding I will also refer to recent case studies that include experiences of Spirent’s Foresight service in action.
Session Name: Digital Flight - A New Cooperative Operating Mode to Complement VFR and IFR
Session Description: Digital Flight is a proposed new operating mode to complement the existing operating modes of visual and instrument flight rules (VFR and IFR). While envisioned to be available to all operators able to meet the operational and performance requirements, this new operating mode will facilitate the operational integration of new entrants like Urban Air Mobility and other Advanced Air Mobility concepts including increasingly autonomous operations. Qualified operators will employ Digital Flight to enhance their airspace access and operational flexibility in all visibility conditions without requiring segregation from incumbent operations. Enabled by connected digital technologies and information exchanges, Digital Flight operators will employ cooperative practices and self-separation to ensure flight path safety in lieu of visual procedures or receiving separation services from Air Traffic Control. Its distributed structure and automated functions will be highly scalable and enable traffic densities and operational tempos not achievable with the existing operating modes.
Session Name: Infrastructure Developed for UAM and Full Automated Transportation
Session Description: eVTOL and UAM operators and manufacturers are planning for vertiports and UAM to support improvements in safety and mobility. There are many infrastructure elements that can support deployments, including analyses of people movement, integration with other transport systems, electrification requirements and safety needs for vertiports and vertistops. Here we'll talk about global deployments and supporting analyses underway now.
Session Name: The Business of Automated Mobility Requires an Integrated, Secure, & Scalable Cross-Domain Digital Infrastructure
Session Description: This session outlines the opportunities of multi-domain automated mobility commerce and transportation and the unique challenge presented by their first in our history reliance on common digital infrastructure elements. The presentation will cover the following:
- Background and projected economic impact of the air mobility, autonomous vehicle, and delivery drone markets.
- Description why the future digital infrastructure required to support each of these modes will for the first time in our history share commonality.
- Explanation of how each of these new multi-modal mobility verticals and the safety, security, and efficiency of the business of automated mobility will benefit from a robust, secure, and scalable cross-domain digital infrastructure.
- Outline the current governmental obstacles to adopting an integrated, cross-domain approach to automated mobility infrastructure policy development, planning, and funding.
- Recommendations to address these challenges and ensure America’s leadership in the business of automated mobility across all domains.