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FEATURE: Augmentive artificial intelligence and Demand-Capacity Balancing = The best of AAM

Words by Dawn Zol­di, CEO of P3 Tech Con­sult­ing

Advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) could pro­vide new deliv­ery and pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion options in both urban and rur­al set­tings soon.

This inno­v­a­tive trans­porta­tion sys­tem will use air­craft with advanced tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing elec­tric air­craft or elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft, in both con­trolled and uncon­trolled air­space.1 

Accord­ing to Pam Mel­roy, the Deputy Admin­is­tra­tor of NASA, this “sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary” next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tion, which will inte­grate tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion with uncrewed air­craft in a way that is fair, equi­table, secure and safe for all, presents a “breath­tak­ing sys­tems engi­neer­ing prob­lem.”2 Dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture, bol­stered with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), will take AAM oper­a­tions to the next lev­el.

The Con­cepts

To help address this chal­lenge, and move the AAM indus­try for­ward, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), with feed­back from NASA and indus­try part­ners, released its Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) Con­cept of Oper­a­tions 2.0. UAM is a sub­set of AAM.

The ConOps pro­vides the vision for the evo­lu­tion of inte­gra­tion from the near-term Inno­vate 28 envi­ron­ment (the work required to enable ini­tial AAM oper­a­tions in a vari­ety of oper­a­tional set­tings or “key sites” in the near-term) to a future of high-den­si­ty urban oper­a­tions.3

The desired AAM end state con­sists of new oper­a­tional rules and infra­struc­ture that will facil­i­tate high­ly auto­mat­ed coop­er­a­tive flow man­age­ment in defined Coop­er­a­tive Areas (CAs), essen­tial­ly UAM Cor­ri­dors, which will enable remote­ly pilot­ed and autonomous air­craft to safe­ly oper­ate at increased oper­a­tional tem­pos in the same space in the nation­al air­space sys­tem (NAS).

The ConOps refers to the over­all coop­er­a­tive oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment, a fed­er­at­ed ser­vice net­work pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal ser­vices, as Exten­si­ble Traf­fic Man­age­ment (xTM). This coop­er­a­tive envi­ron­ment will com­ple­ment the tra­di­tion­al pro­vi­sion of Air Traf­fic Ser­vices (ATS).

It will include not only AAM and UAM but also low-alti­tude UAS Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UTM) (the area at and below 400 feet above ground lev­el) and Upper Class E Traf­fic Man­age­ment (ETM). Dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture will pro­vide the back­bone for this new avi­a­tion par­a­digm.

Dig­i­tal Back­bone

Coop­er­a­tive Oper­at­ing Prac­tices (COPs), indus­try-defined, FAA-approved prac­tices that will address how oper­a­tors coop­er­a­tive­ly man­age their oper­a­tions with­in the CA (i.e., UAM cor­ri­dor), will include tech­nolo­gies that ensure con­flict man­age­ment and Demand-Capac­i­ty Bal­anc­ing (DCB).

The Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) defines DCB as the “strate­gic eval­u­a­tion of sys­tem-wide traf­fic flows and aero­drome capac­i­ties to allow air­space users to deter­mine when, where, and how they oper­ate, while mit­i­gat­ing con­flict­ing needs for air­space and aero­drome capac­i­ty. This col­lab­o­ra­tive process allows for the effi­cient man­age­ment of air traf­fic flow through the use of infor­ma­tion on sys­tem-wide air traf­fic flows, weath­er, and assets.”4

Exact­ly how all of these var­i­ous con­cepts (not all of which are ful­ly described here) will actu­al­ly work, includ­ing DCB, remains a work in progress. For exam­ple, the ConOps projects DCB capa­bil­i­ties will arise dur­ing midterm oper­a­tions and come to full fruition dur­ing mature state oper­a­tions.

Key play­ers for DCB include Providers of Ser­vices to UAM (PSU) that will enable oper­a­tors to receive and exchange infor­ma­tion dur­ing UAM oper­a­tions, and Sup­ple­men­tal Data Ser­vice Providers (SDSPs), that will essen­tial­ly feed the PSUs by pro­vid­ing envi­ron­ment, sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, strate­gic oper­a­tional demand, ver­ti­port avail­abil­i­ty and sup­ple­men­tal data, such as weath­er. (Note – in UTM, UAS Ser­vice Sup­pli­ers will enable col­lab­o­ra­tive deci­sion-mak­ing and con­flict avoidance/deconfliction, which pro­mote safe­ty, equi­table air­space access, and effi­cient oper­a­tions – mean­ing, DCB).

The impor­tance of DCB in UAM oper­a­tions can­not be over­stat­ed. DCB facil­i­tates tac­ti­cal sep­a­ra­tion and ensures resources do not become over­whelmed, both of which bol­ster safe­ty.

Sys­tem of Sys­tems

DCB sys­tems will like­ly need to con­nect to the FAA’s Sys­tem Wide Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment (SWIM) sys­tem, the dig­i­tal data-shar­ing back­bone of the Next Gen­er­a­tion Air Trans­porta­tion Sys­tem (NextGen). It deliv­ers the infra­struc­ture, stan­dards, and ser­vices to pro­vide a sin­gle point of access for the near real-time, rel­e­vant, and reli­able aero­nau­ti­cal, flight, weath­er, and sur­veil­lance infor­ma­tion need­ed to opti­mize the secure exchange of rel­e­vant data across the NAS and the avi­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty.5

The com­plex­i­ty of SWIM is beyond the scope of this post. The SWIM Ter­mi­nal Data Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sys­tem (STDDS) alone, which con­verts lega­cy ter­mi­nal data col­lect­ed from air­port tow­ers and Ter­mi­nal Radar Approach Con­trol (TRACON) facil­i­ties into eas­i­ly acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion, pulls data from these 6 dif­fer­ent sys­tems:

ASDE‑X – Air­port Sur­face Detec­tion Equip­ment – Mod­el X
ASSC – Air­port Sur­face Sur­veil­lance Capa­bil­i­ty
STARS – Stan­dard Ter­mi­nal Automa­tion Replace­ment Sys­tem
RVR – Run­way Visu­al Range
EFSTS – Elec­tron­ic Flight Strip Trans­fer Sys­tem
TDLS – Tow­er Data Link Ser­vices6

Inte­grat­ing SWIM alone with DCB, to coor­di­nate UAM col­lab­o­ra­tive oper­a­tor flight intent and resource avail­abil­i­ty, will require the culling of an inor­di­nate amount of data. For mature AAM oper­a­tions, this will require the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). But not just any AI.

Aug­men­tive AI

Cur­rent gen­er­a­tive AI sys­tems do not con­tain a basic lev­el of con­scious­ness to “think” as humans do. Instead, they incor­po­rate neur­al net­works and machine learn­ing based on sta­tis­tics and prob­a­bil­i­ties. They have been known to hal­lu­ci­nate. They pro­vide inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion, come to con­clu­sions con­sis­tent with their mis­sions, but are adverse to humans or com­bine exist­ing pieces of data togeth­er to cre­ate a new thing (that may not be real at all). Fake infor­ma­tion in DCB can cost lives.

Aug­men­tive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AAI), on the oth­er hand, pro­vides a much high­er lev­el of func­tion­al­i­ty to sup­port human endeav­ors. The Valmiz™ Aug­men­tive Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AAI) sys­tem uses a mul­ti-agent approach. It uti­lizes the client’s own pre-val­i­dat­ed data, such as the FAA’s own data­bas­es like SWIM, to cre­ate an enter­prise-lev­el super knowl­edge base.

The agents of Valmiz™, Veda, Vera, Vela, Vega and Xavier, act indi­vid­u­al­ly and as part of a larg­er whole:

Veda – The sys­tem that pro­vides the core AI func­tion­al­i­ty.
Vera – The sys­tem that han­dles dynam­ic key-val­ue changes.
Vega – The sys­tem that man­ages the stor­age of the knowl­edge bases.
Vela – The sys­tem that gath­ers data from dif­fer­ent sources.
Xavier – The sys­tem that facil­i­tates human-machine inter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Valmiz™ could enhance DCB sys­tems through its com­pound­ing capa­bil­i­ties by enabling com­pre­hen­sive and secure data fusion, analy­sis, and dis­tri­b­u­tion. It could ingest SWIM data, for exam­ple, and con­nect it to oth­er sys­tems to pro­vide action­able intel­li­gence to key UAM stake­hold­ers (PSUs, for exam­ple).

The infor­ma­tion would be up-to-the-minute accu­rate because Valmiz™ dynam­i­cal­ly con­tin­u­al­ly runs and search­es out infor­ma­tion based on key­words that the humans give it. With Valmiz, the human is at the cen­ter of mak­ing crit­i­cal deci­sions, while being enhanced with AI. In that way, man­u­al, mun­dane, and error-prone tasks will be han­dled by Valmiz.

This could be a game-chang­er for the safe­ty of AAM and UAM oper­a­tions. This is but one exam­ple of how it could do so in sup­port of a wide range of inte­gra­tion efforts, with­in the larg­er AAM/UAM con­struct.

Oth­er poten­tial sup­port use cas­es could include trav­el­er-focused appli­ca­tions (includ­ing rebook­ing), ground oper­a­tions, main­te­nance and fleet man­age­ment, air-to-ground trans­porta­tion mobil­i­ty inter­faces and more. The sky’s the lim­it, when it comes to how AAI can cre­ate the best of all worlds for DCB and AAM.

Ref­er­ences:

[1] Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Con­cept of Oper­a­tions 2.0., April 26, 2023, https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/Urban%20Air%20Mobility%20%28UAM%29%20Concept%20of%20Operations%202.0_0.pdf

[2] Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Sum­mit, Ple­nary: The Future of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, August 3, 2023 (author’s notes)

[3] Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Imple­men­ta­tion Plan, Near-term (Innovate28) Focus with an Eye on the Future of AAM, Ver­sion 1.0, July 2023, https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/AAM-I28-Implementation-Plan.pdf

[4] Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (ICAO), Doc­u­ment 9854, Glob­al Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment Oper­a­tional Con­cept (GATMOC), First Edi­tion, 2005.

[5] Sys­tem Wide Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment (SWIM) – https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/swim

[6] SWIM Ter­mi­nal Data Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sys­tem (STDDS) ‑https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/swim/stdds

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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