AFWERX, NASA Partner “to develop Digital AAM Operations Centre”

AFWERX Air­space Inno­va­tion and Prime Part­ner­ships pro­gram is part­ner­ing with NASA and the FAA to devel­op a Dig­i­tal Oper­a­tions Cen­tre for future Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) via the Civil­ian Com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion Readi­ness Pilot Pro­gram (CCRPP) awardee, ResilienX, reports a press release.

ResilienX has received USD4.8 mil­lion in fund­ing through the CCRPP. The com­pa­ny is focused on the safe­ty of AAM ecosys­tems and is lead­ing the way with an indus­try con­sor­tium to cre­ate a dig­i­tal sys­tem for Advanced air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions. Using the partner’s research exper­tise, this col­lab­o­ra­tion will aim to meet the needs of the emerg­ing field of AAM.

Ryan Pleskach, CEO of ResilienX, remarked, “Through a ded­i­cat­ed sys­tems engi­neer­ing approach, we intend to devel­op a dual-use solu­tion to the core dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture need­ed for advanced air mobil­i­ty that is inher­ent­ly scal­able and exten­si­ble. Through this pio­neer­ing effort and with sup­port of all the fed­er­al stake­hold­ers that AFWERX is bring­ing to the table, we believe this solu­tion will be turnkey and avail­able to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial mar­kets in late 2024.”

Ryan Pleskach

Ear­li­er this year, AFWERX for­malised these part­ner­ships with a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the AAM Inter­a­gency Work­ing Group to plot the future of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.

Mean­while, the CCRPP is a NASA Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer pro­gram “which takes mis­sion-rel­e­vant tech­nolo­gies in devel­op­ment and infus­es them with fund­ing intend­ed to fos­ter com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion,” explains the release. It con­tin­ues, “This sys­tem is intend­ed to enhance base secu­ri­ty, spe­cial forces efforts, emer­gency dis­as­ter response, and pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­porta­tion plan­ning. It is fur­ther being devel­oped to include oth­er tech­nolo­gies nec­es­sary for air domain aware­ness.”

Dar­shan Divakaran, Head of AFWERX Air­space Inno­va­tion and Prime Part­ner­ships, com­ment­ed, “CCRPP is a true exam­ple of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship where gov­ern­ment stake­hold­ers and an indus­try con­sor­tium are work­ing togeth­er on the air­space efforts.”

The release explains, “The project intends to define and per­form ini­tial inte­gra­tion of an AAM Oper­a­tions Cen­tre that is scal­able, tac­ti­cal and enables ver­i­fi­ca­tion and val­i­da­tion of the var­i­ous sys­tems and sen­sors involved in uncrewed aer­i­al sys­tems, elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing oper­a­tions and oth­er advanced avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies. The ini­tial Cen­tre will be built out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with NUAIR at the Syra­cuse Han­cock Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, with an aim to test and tran­si­tion it to addi­tion­al loca­tions by 2025.”

‘Dash’ Divakaran

Each com­pa­ny in the con­sor­tium offers their indus­try exper­tise and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments to cre­ate the best sys­tem pos­si­ble. AFWERX plans to bring in addi­tion­al indus­try part­ners dur­ing the next phase.

Divakaran con­tin­ued. “Agili­ty Prime helped pave the way for gov­ern­ment and indus­try to work togeth­er on air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The Air­space Inno­va­tion team is tak­ing it a step for­ward with air­space inte­gra­tion, man­age­ment and secu­ri­ty efforts focused on emerg­ing avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies.”

The first devel­op­ment phase is to include a detailed need and task assess­ment, with user inter­views and obser­va­tions, ini­tial inte­gra­tion of base­line tech­nolo­gies and tri­alling. The sec­ond phase will see user-test­ing of human fac­tors, safe­ty devel­op­ment, pro­to­type test­ing and a live demon­stra­tion of the sys­tem.

The pro­gram is planned to progress until Octo­ber 2025.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.resilienx.com/

https://afwerx.com/

https://sbir.nasa.gov/content/ccrpp-phase‑2

(Top image: Cred­it — Andrew Carter)