Wisk and NASA Sign five-year research partnership to advance autonomous flight

Wisk has entered into a new five-year Non-Reim­bursable Space Act Agree­ment (NRSAA) with NASA, which will focus on crit­i­cal research led by NASA’s Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment Explo­ration (ATM‑X) project - aimed at advanc­ing autonomous air­craft under Instru­ment Flight Rules (IFR) in the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem (NAS). 

As Wisk is devel­op­ing an autonomous eVTOL air­craft, the com­pa­ny is work­ing with NASA to help define the indus­try stan­dards that will sup­port the intro­duc­tion of autonomous air­craft in the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem (NAS).

This research will help reg­u­la­tors con­sid­er future flight pro­ce­dures and capa­bil­i­ties to accel­er­ate U.S. lead­er­ship in auto­mat­ed avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy.  

Erick Coro­na, Direc­tor of Air­space Oper­a­tional Inte­gra­tion at Wisk, said: “This new, long-term agree­ment with NASA is a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward for Wisk and the broad­er UAM indus­try.

“With NASA’s sim­u­la­tion and LVC capa­bil­i­ties, we can accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of our Gen 6 autonomous sys­tems to safe­ly and effi­cient­ly inte­grate into the U.S. NAS before the end of the decade.”

To ini­ti­ate ear­ly work under this annex, the Wisk and NASA teams held a work­shop last month at the Mike Mon­roney Aero­nau­ti­cal Cen­ter in Okla­homa City, Okla­homa.

The teams dis­cussed how instru­ment flight pro­ce­dures and advanced tech­nolo­gies would work hand-in-hand to enable safe and effi­cient autonomous pas­sen­ger flight.

Over the course of the five-year agree­ment, Wisk and NASA will con­tin­ue to con­duct the research test­ing nec­es­sary to inform require­ments and pro­ce­dures for future oper­a­tions.

Since 2020, Wisk and NASA have col­lab­o­rat­ed to devel­op key guid­ance for the safe inte­gra­tion of autonomous air­craft sys­tems for UAM oper­a­tions under an ini­tial Space Act Agree­ment.

This expand­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion will focus on research using advanced sim­u­la­tion and Live Vir­tu­al Con­struc­tive (LVC) flight envi­ron­ments that com­bine live flights with a sim­u­lat­ed air­space to enable researchers to assess future oper­a­tions. This work is instru­men­tal in inform­ing the devel­op­ment of:

• Air­space and route design opti­mized for high­ly auto­mat­ed Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) oper­a­tions
• Crit­i­cal air­craft and ground-based safe­ty sys­tem require­ments nec­es­sary for autonomous flight in urban envi­ron­ments
• Air Traf­fic Con­trol (ATC) com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­to­cols and pro­ce­dures for seam­less inte­gra­tion of UAM air­craft