NASA Software Developers Take Autonomy from Simulation to Flight
NASA’s Laura Mitchell of the Armstrong Flight Research Centre wrote on the Administration’s website this week an article about developing automation software for flying taxis and the development steps required. Wisk, EHang and Xpeng, for example, are three companies focused on autonomy.
Mitchell writes, “Before automation software can be used for flight it must be developed and tested to ensure its accuracy and safety. NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility researchers at Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, have been developing automation software as part of a collaboration with Sikorsky and DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This research will ultimately test the software’s responsiveness using two highly specialised helicopters as surrogate air taxis.”
She then explains that by using customised test-talents with scripted flight paths, “software developers and pilots run such software through precise simulations of air-to-air encounters, enabling a variety of conflict scenarios to test algorithms.”
Ethan Williams, lead software developer, is quoted: “The software design begins with conceptualising what future Advanced Air Mobility vehicle operations and flight behaviour scenarios might look like. We then refine the software requirements under development, so it behaves as expected enabling the proposed Advanced Air Mobility air-taxi operations. The simulation using the tablets and ground control room displays help to identify potential issues prior to actual flight testing.”
The team can then evaluate how the software prototype allows pilots using the tablet, to initiate specific autonomous flight rules that would be common for air taxis in the highly complex, dynamic, and dense Advanced Air Mobility airspace.
Scott Howe, a NASA pilot, explains, “Pilots must be comfortable with the software and tablet controller given the extensive ground training familiarisation, desktop and cockpit simulation exercises we’ve run, where test aircrew are comfortable using them.”
He adds, “We’ve proven the software interacts well with the aircraft flight control systems and is very capable of safely executing multiple precise software-controlled profiles in a single flight.”
When the project reaches the flight stage, NASA researchers will employ the Sikorsky Autonomy Research Aircraft, a modified S‑76B helicopter, and the company’s Optionally Piloted Vehicle Black Hawk helicopter, as air-taxi surrogates. Their tests will evaluate the NASA-designed automation software and flight control tablets in several Advanced Air Mobility operations flight scenarios.
So with both NASA test pilots and Sikorsky safety operators onboard each aircraft, the two can autonomously fly trials to capture the data from precise flight scenarios as the pilots interact with the research tablets to select their desired avoidance manoeuvres from a set of software-provided options.
The article concludes, “Future Advanced Air Mobility operations may include flight in very dense traffic environments. These new routes must include safe and reliable separation from every other aircraft in the area. NASA is helping to create those capabilities exploring safe procedures to pave the way for air taxi operations in the national air space.”
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(Top image: NASA lead software developer, Ethan Williams, left, pilot Scott Howe, and operations test consultant Jan Scofield run a flight path management software simulation at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Credit: NASA)
