Sbir phase II: 4D flightpath-based autonomous separation assurance systems (asas)

This Cooperative Agreement award of $999,919 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program supports the development of an autonomous air traffic management (ATM) solution for uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). The project aims to enable efficient, safe, and cost-effective deconfliction of dense UAV operations, addressing the growing need for robust ATM solutions to unlock the societal and economic potential of UAVs. The key products to be delivered include:

1. Improvements to the existing ATM technology, such as enhanced fault tolerance, better consideration of UAV capabilities, and the addition of flight planning tools and optimization techniques.
2. Integration of common open-source UAV mission descriptions, international standards for sharing UAV flight intent, and data sources providing real-time UAV position updates to enable the ATM system to detect and avoid aerial conflicts with a diverse set of UAVs.
3. A safe, reliable, and feature-rich software product for providing autonomous ATM services to UAV operators.

Subawards are planned as part of this project. The award period is from Jul 1, 2024 to Jun 30, 2026.

Abstract

The broader/commercial impact of this small business innovation research (sbir) phase II project is enabling efficient, safe, and cost effective deconfliction of dense uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) operations. Widespread usage of uavs is expected to bring significant societal benefits. The uavs that are anticipated to be utilized for package delivery are estimated to have lower carbon impact than their ground transport counterparts. Delivery drones are currently used for life saving delivery of organs and medications. Uavs currently used for inspection provide safer and more economical alternatives to traditional inspection techniques. To safely get to the flight densities that capture the true societal and economic potential of uavs, robust autonomous air traffic management solutions are needed. The technology that will be commercialized in this project will fill this need for the emerging UAV market by providing reliable and fast aerial conflict detection and suggestion of conflict avoidance maneuvers. This small business innovation research (sbir) phase II project will focus on improving the autonomous air traffic management (ATM) technology developed in the sbir phase i project and extending the system to include a wider range of uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) operations. Improvements to the ATM technology will include improved fault tolerance, improved consideration of UAV capabilities when suggesting aerial conflict avoidance maneuvers, adding flight planning tools, and using optimization techniques to avoid compounding aerial conflicts. Common open-source UAV mission descriptions, developing international standards for the sharing of UAV flight intent, and data sources providing updates of UAV positions will be infused into the ATM technology to detect and avoid aerial conflicts with a more diverse set of uavs. The result of this sbir phase II project will be a safe, reliable, and feature rich software product for providing autonomous ATM services to UAV operators. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.