Adaptive Autonomous Separation for Uam in Mixed Operations

Abstract

The excitement and promise generated by concepts for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) have inspired both new entrants and large aerospace companies throughout the world to invest 100s of millions in research and development of air vehicles, both piloted and unpiloted, to fulfill these dreams. The management and separation of all these new aircraft has received much less attention, however, and even though NASA’s lead is advancing some promising concepts for UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) Traffic Management (UTM), most operations today are limited to line of sight or airspace reservation and geofencing of individual flights. Various schemes have been proposed to control this new traffic, some modeled after conventional air traffic control and some proposing fully automatic management, either from a ground-based entity or carried out on board among the vehicles themselves. Previous work has examined the very low altitude airspace within a metroplex in which piloted traffic is very rare. A management scheme was proposed taking advantage of the homogeneous nature of the traffic. This paper expands the concept to include all altitudes desired for eVTOL (electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing) urban and short, inter-city transportation. The interactions with piloted aircraft operating under both visual and instrument flight rules are analyzed, and the role of ATC provided services in the postulated mixed traffic environment is covered. Design separation values for each type of possible traffic encounter are derived and the relationship between required surveillance range and closure speed is given. Finally, realistic scenarios are presented illustrating how the concept can reliably handle the density and traffic mix that fully implemented and successful UAM operations would entail.