Task order - statement of work (SOW) task title: certification considerations for adaptive systems 1.0 introduction/background: NASA's aviation safety program is conducting research directed at…

Task order - statement of work (SOW) task title: certification considerations for adaptive systems 1.0 introduction/background: NASA's aviation safety program is conducting research directed at improving the safety of current and future aircraft operating in the national airspace system. The research focus includes the system-wide safety assurance technologies (ssat) project. Under ssat, there is a technical challenge area known as assurance of flight critical systems (afcs). The afcs technical challenge is to develop verification and validation techniques that ensure high confidence that new emerging technologies are safe and provide a cost-effective basis for assurance and certification of complex civil aviation systems. Verification and validation of adaptive systems technology fall under this challenge. Adaptive systems, which have the ability to change behavior at run-time in response to changes to various factors including the operational environment, system configuration, resource availability, are used in myriad domains for a wide range of purposes. This range can extend from passive monitoring or advisory systems, to estimating one or more parameters to improve system performance or efficiency, and in the extreme, to replacing the pilot with autonomous computing. As the computational ability to analyze large quantities of data increases, new applications are being devised. For adaptive systems to be used in civil aviation applications in airborne or air traffic management systems, they will need to comply with regulatory requirements just as any other system would. Because requirements for system safety assurance are based on the concept that correct behavior of a system can be specified, predicted, and verified prior to operation, any use of adaptive systems in civil applications poses challenges in assuring safety by means of traditional safety assurance methods and procedures. Over the past 3 years, NASA has taken initial steps to identify regulatory challenges to using artificial intelligence approaches to enable real-time adaptation, including machine learning and neural networks, in airborne aircraft products. Additional research is needed to recognize the current state of the art in artificial intelligence and its subfields that have direct applicability to aviation applications, and extend understanding of certification gaps or challenges with different artificial intelligence approaches. The ultimate goal of this line of investigation is to identify effective means to ensure, with a high level of confidence, that adaptive systems used in airborne or air traffic management applications are safe, and determine changes, if any, needed to existing system safety standards and guidance to assure their safety. 2.0 scope & objective(s): 2.1 the scope of this task order is to investigate the current state of artificial intelligence, as IT might apply in the civil aviation domain, including airborne and air traffic management systems. 2.2 the objective of this task order is to deliver a document that provides a comprehensive overview of the following: (a) the subfields and associated approaches in artificial intelligence that might have applicability to the development and implementation of adaptive aeronautical systems; (b) terminology, catalog, and categorization of those subfields and associated approaches that facilitates development of a step-wise approach to certification of adaptive systems; and (c) system, software, and (if relevant) hardware certification gaps and challenges associated with the different subfields and approaches. 3.0 description of the work/tasks to be performed: for this task order, the contractor shall perform the tasks listed below. 3.1 describe the current state of the art in artificial intelligence, as applicable to civil aviation the contractor shall conduct a comprehensive survey of the published lite