NASA’S UAS INTEGRATION INTO THE NAS: A REPORT ON THE HUMAN SYSTEMS INTEGRATION PHASE 1 SIMULATION ACTIVITIES

摘要

In 2011 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began a five-year Project toaddress the technical barriers related to routine access of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in the NationalAirspace System (NAS). Planned in two phases, the goal of the first phase was to lay the foundations forthe Project by identifying those barriers and key issues to be addressed to achieve integration. Phase 1activities were completed two years into the five-year Project. The purpose of this paper is to reviewactivities within the Human Systems Integration (HSI) subproject in Phase 1 toward its two objectives: 1)develop GCS guidelines for routine UAS access to the NAS, and 2) develop a prototype display suitewithin an existing Ground Control Station (GCS). The first objective directly addresses a critical barrier forUAS integration into the NAS – a lack of GCS design standards or requirements. First, the paper describesthe initial development of a prototype GCS display suite and supporting simulation software capabilities.Then, three simulation experiments utilizing this simulation architecture are summarized. The firstexperiment sought to determine a baseline performance of UAS pilots operating in civil airspace undercurrent instrument flight rules for manned aircraft. The second experiment examined the effect of currentlyemployed UAS contingency procedures on Air Traffic Control (ATC) participants. The third experimentcompared three GCS command and control interfaces on UAS pilot response times in compliance withATC clearances. The authors discuss how the results of these and future simulation and flight-testingactivities contribute to the development of GCS guidelines to support the safe integration of UAS into theNAS. Finally, the planned activities for Phase 2, including an integrated human-in-the-loop simulation andtwo flight tests are briefly described.