Initial Study of Tailored Trajectory Management for Multi-Vehicle Uncrewed Regional Air Cargo Operations

Abstract

The primary contribution of this paper is an evaluation of the potential value of a tailored trajectory management (TTM) capability for uncrewed aircraft (UA) operators that is proactive in detecting conflicts and developing trajectory-based solutions for UA prior to air traffic control (ATC) performing conflict resolution. The experiment matrix is composed of one baseline simulation that models current air traffic operations without such a capability and four test simulations with different configurations of such a capability. In each simulation, five UA operations into Fort Worth Alliance airport were modeled in the presence of recorded tracks for about 4700 flights on January 18, 2022. The analysis focused on the extent to which such a capability was able to preclude an event that could spike UA operator workload. More specifically, in this study, the emulated UA operator TTM capability for multi-vehicle regional air cargo operations was able to reduce the number of instances of concurrent UA conflicts in the modeled ATC conflict resolution timeframe of 8 minutes or less from three to as low as one.

Authors

• David Thipphavong Ames Research Center
• Todd Lauderdale Ames Research Center
• Bob Windhorst Ames Research Center
• Heather Arneson Ames Research Center
• Husni Idris Ames Research Center
• Richard Coppenbarger Ames Research Center
• Jordan Sakakeeny Ames Research Center
• Nadezhda Dimitrova American Systems (United States)
• Vishwanath Bulusu Universities Space Research Association
• Gano Chatterji Universities Space Research Association
• Arwa Aweiss Ames Research Center

Keywords

• uncrewed aircraft, regional air cargo, tailored trajectory management