Results for “mobility research” — Page 5

NASA NTRS2003

The Mobile Agents Integrated Field Test: Mars Desert Research Station April 2003

The Mobile Agents model-based, distributed architecture, which integrates diverse components in a system for lunar and planetary surface operations, was extensively tested in a two-week field "technology retreat" at the Mars Society s Desert Research Station (MDRS) during April 2003. More than twenty scientists and engineers from three NASA centers and two universities refined and tested the system through a series of incremental scenarios. Agent software, implemented in runtime Brahms, processed GPS, health data, and voice commands-monitoring, controlling and logging science data throughout simulated EVAs with two geologists. Predefined EVA plans, modified on the fly by voice command, enabled the Mobile Agents system to provide navigation and timing advice. Communications were maintained over five wireless nodes distributed over hills and into canyons for 5 km; data, including photographs and status was transmitted automatically to the desktop at mission control in Houston. This paper describes the system configurations, communication protocols, scenarios, and test results.

Clancey, William J.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Simulation Architecture for Air Traffic Over Urban Environments Supporting Autonomy Research in Advanced Air Mobility

NASA is conducting investigations into Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) concepts, aircraft, and operations. One of the most challenging scenarios for AAM will be enabling safe routine access into densely populated urban centers. To address challenges in the urban environment, a moderately high-fidelity simulation capability is needed to investigate AAM flight operations over a regional area for the development and evaluation of autonomy technologies. This paper describes a system to simulate flight operations around regions such as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area at a moderately-high scale (10's-100's of flights) that incorporates detailed vehicle models and control necessary to support research in airborne autonomy. The flight vehicle utilizes NASA AAM concept vehicle dynamics integrated with a custom flight management system and flight control system to accurately simulate all phases of flight. Glass cockpit displays have been developed for monitoring aircraft operation over a detailed simulated urban environment. Simulation models have been integrated to simulate air and ground-based sensors, such as radar and LIDAR. The commercial X-Plane software package is used as a rendering engine to mimic vision-based sensors (such as onboard and ground-based cameras) at various times of day and in various weather conditions over a relatively detailed graphical model of the city. The paper presents a detailed illustration of the simulation and software architecture used for traffic over this urban region. This system is enabling the evaluation of NASA research concepts in autonomy for urban AAM operations on the path toward aircraft flight test evaluation.

Keerthana Kannan↗

NASA NTRS2019

A Research Platform for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and UAS Traffic Management (UTM) Concepts and Application

The purpose of this paper is to describe a research platform for the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concept. UAM was conceived to enable short-range, low-altitiude service to commuters in metropolitan areas. At the NASA Ames Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) user interfaces have been developed to support small UAS operations for the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project. Due to operational similarities between UAM and UTM, the UTM architecture offers a convenient starting point for research and development of UAM operations. Herein, we begin with an overview of the primary need and expectations characterizing concepts for modern air transportation systems, followed by a brief description of the UTM and UAM concepts. We then describe the UTM architecture, as well as the AOL's research platform and capabilities. The potential applications for UAM research and development are then discussed, providing some direction for future research efforts.

UAM↗

NASA NTRS2002

Mobile Router Technology Development

Cisco Systems and NASA have been performing joint research on mobile routing technology under a NASA Space Act Agreement. Cisco developed mobile router technology and provided that technology to NASA for applications to aeronautic and space-based missions. NASA has performed stringent performance testing of the mobile router, including the interaction of routing and transport-level protocols. This paper describes mobile routing, the mobile router, and some key configuration parameters. In addition, the paper describes the mobile routing test network and test results documenting the performance of transport protocols in dynamic routing environments.

Ivancic, William D.↗

NASA NTRS2023

An Interface Specification for Urban Air Mobility Performance Models to Support Air Traffic Management Research

Performance modeling of Urban Air Mobility vehicles in support of Air Traffic Management research poses new challenges. These aircraft often rely on a combination of fixed-wing and rotorcraft performance capabilities to enable a new and still-evolving concept of high-volume operations in densely populated areas. These characteristics lead to variability in performance model format and functionality, complicating model development and leading to difficulties for users integrating the models into their applications. This paper describes an interface specification for performance models that is intended to help address this issue. The interface aims to support the core functionality of performance models while also providing the necessary flexibility to both model developers and users. The specification describes the required model documentation, required inputs to the model, and required outputs from the model in general terms that are adaptable to most programming languages. The utilization of an appropriate interface specification will support the development of an Urban Air Mobility performance model database and help to improve interoperability of these models for a broad array of user applications.

Trajectory Prediction↗

NASA NTRS2023

An Interface Specification for Urban Air Mobility Performance Models to Support Air Traffic Management Research

Performance modeling of Urban Air Mobility vehicles in support of Air Traffic Management research poses new challenges. These aircraft often rely on a combination of fixed-wing and rotorcraft performance capabilities to enable a new and still-evolving concept of high-volume operations in densely populated areas. These characteristics lead to variability in performance model format and functionality, complicating model development and leading to difficulties for users integrating the models into their applications. This paper describes an interface specification for performance models that is intended to help address this issue. The interface aims to support the core functionality of performance models while also providing the necessary flexibility to both model developers and users. The specification describes the required model documentation, required inputs to the model, and required outputs from the model in general terms that are adaptable to most programming languages. The utilization of an appropriate interface specification will support the development of an Urban Air Mobility performance model database and help to improve interoperability of these models for a broad array of user applications.

Trajectory Prediction↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Collaborative Weather Research and Development for Urban Air Mobility

NASA recently collaborated with National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and AvMet Application Inc. to identify the weather information, existing aviation weather products, and the novel approaches that are required to model and mitigate various impacts of uncertain atmospheric conditions to support safe and efficient Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations. This presentation will provide updates on the collaborative efforts of weather impacts modelling and analysis for future evaluation of UAM concepts of operations in the presence of weather.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS1990

Space-time modeling using environmental constraints in a mobile robot system

Grid-based models of a robot's local environment have been used by many researchers building mobile robot control systems. The attraction of grid-based models is their clear parallel between the internal model and the external world. However, the discrete nature of such representations does not match well with the continuous nature of actions and usually serves to limit the abilities of the robot. This work describes a spatial modeling system that extracts information from a grid-based representation to form a symbolic representation of the robot's local environment. The approach makes a separation between the representation provided by the sensing system and the representation used by the action system. Separation allows asynchronous operation between sensing and action in a mobile robot, as well as the generation of a more continuous representation upon which to base actions.

Slack, Marc G.↗

DOE OSTI2021

Measurements from mobile surface vehicles during the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE)

Abstract. Between 14 and 20 July 2018, small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) were deployed to the San Luis Valley of Colorado (USA) alongside surface-based remote sensors, in situ sensors, and radiosonde systems as part of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE). The measurements collected as part of LAPSE-RATE targeted quantities related to enhancing our understanding of boundary layer structure, cloud and aerosol properties and surface–atmosphere exchange and provide detailed information to support model evaluation and improvement work. Additionally, intensive intercomparison between the different unmanned aircraft platforms was completed. The current paper describes the observations obtained using three different types of surface-based mobile observing vehicles. These included the University of Colorado Mobile UAS Research Collaboratory (MURC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Severe Storms Laboratory Mobile Mesonet, and two University of Nebraska Combined Mesonet and Tracker (CoMeT) vehicles. Over the 1-week campaign, a total of 143 h of data were collected using this combination of vehicles. The data from these coordinated activities provide detailed perspectives on the spatial variability of atmospheric state parameters (air temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind) throughout the northern half of the San Luis Valley. These datasets have been checked for quality and published to the Zenodo data archive under a specific “community” setup for LAPSE-RATE (https://zenodo.org/communities/lapse-rate/, last access: 21 January 2021) and are accessible at no cost by all registered users. The primary dataset DOIs are https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3814765 (CU MURC measurements; de Boer et al., 2020d), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3738175 (NSSL MM measurements; Waugh, 2020), and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3838724 (UNL CoMeT measurements; Houston and Erwin, 2020).

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

NASA NTRS2007

Solutions Network Formulation Report. NASA's Potential Contributions in Remote Quorum Sensing and the Management of Harmful Algal Blooms

This candidate solution proposes to use the night-imaging capabilities of the HSTC from SAC-C and of the HSC from SAC-D/Aquarius to detect bioluminescent events associated with HABs (harmful algal blooms). Once detected, this information could be fed to the NOAA CSCOR (Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research) Harmful Algal Bloom Event Response Program, which acts quickly to fund the mobilization of research teams and to engage local agencies in a response. The HSC/HSTC data can serve as input to the HABSOS decision support system to provide information on location, extent, and duration of HAB events. Society will benefit from improved protection of the health of humans beings, aquatic ecosystems, and coastal economies. This work supports coastal management, public health, and homeland security applications.

Fletcher, Rose↗

NASA NTRS2023

Performance Modeling of Urban Air Mobility Vehicles to Support Air Traffic Management Research

The recent emergence of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles has resulted in a need for flight performance models that enable comprehensive simulation-based research on air traffic management topics such as route structure, scheduling, and separation standards. Successful performance modeling methods exist for a wide range of traditional aircraft designs. However, comparable modeling methods appropriate for UAM vehicles that combine fixed-wing and rotorcraft performance have not yet been established. One challenge to progress has been the lack of available data capturing the performance characteristics and unique flight profiles of these aircraft. This paper describes methods used to generate the required performance data and the development of performance models for UAM vehicles. Included is a review of the energy and power equations often used in developing performance models for traditional aircraft as well as a discussion of their applicability to UAM vehicles. The challenge of generating realistic performance data in over-actuated vehicles transitioning from hover to cruise flight is also addressed through an approach based on objective function optimization. A table-based performance model format adapted to UAM configurations is described, as well as parametric models intended to accompany the performance table to allow detailed modeling of power and fuel consumption during accelerated flight, turning flight, or flight at an arbitrary climb or descent rate. A discussion of future work is also provided, including the need for refinement of UAM performance modeling methods and formats, especially in conjunction with improvements to aerodynamic modeling of vehicles with complex designs where strong interaction effects may dominate important regions of the flight envelope.

Performance Modeling↗

NASA NTRS2023

Performance Modeling of Urban Air Mobility Vehicles to Support Air Traffic Management Research

The recent emergence of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles has resulted in a need for flight performance models that enable comprehensive simulation-based research on air traffic management topics such as route structure, scheduling, and separation standards. Successful performance modeling methods exist for a wide range of traditional aircraft designs. However, comparable modeling methods appropriate for UAM vehicles that combine fixed-wing and rotorcraft performance have not yet been established. One challenge to progress has been the lack of available data capturing the performance characteristics and unique flight profiles of these aircraft. This paper describes methods used to generate the required performance data and the development of performance models for UAM vehicles. Included is a review of the energy and power equations often used in developing performance models for traditional aircraft as well as a discussion of their applicability to UAM vehicles. The challenge of generating realistic performance data in over-actuated vehicles transitioning from hover to cruise flight is also addressed through an approach based on objective function optimization. A table-based performance model format adapted to UAM configurations is described, as well as parametric models intended to accompany the performance table to allow detailed modeling of power and fuel consumption during accelerated flight, turning flight, or flight at an arbitrary climb or descent rate. A discussion of future work is also provided, including the need for refinement of UAM performance modeling methods and formats, especially in conjunction with improvements to aerodynamic modeling of vehicles with complex designs where strong interaction effects may dominate important regions of the flight envelope.

Performance Modeling↗

NASA NTRS1990

A mobile transporter concept for EVA assembly of future spacecraft

This paper details the ground test program for the NASA Langley Research Center Mobile Transporter concept. The Mobile Transporter would assist EVA astronauts in the assembly of the Space Station Freedom. 1-g and simulated O-g (neutral buoyancy) tests were conducted to evaluate the use of the Mobile Transporter. A three-bay (44 struts) orthogonal tetrahedral truss configuration with a 15-foot-square cross section was repeatedly assembled by a single pair of pressure suited test subjects working from the Mobile Transporter astronaut positioning devices. The average unit assembly time was 28 seconds/strut. The results of these tests indicate that the use of a Mobile Transporter for EVA assembly of Space Station size structure is viable and practical. Additionally, the Mobile Transporter could be used to construct other spacecraft such as the submillimeter astronomical laboratory, space crane, and interplanetary (i.e., Mars and lunar) spacecraft.

Watson, Judith J.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Advancing Air Mobility: Few-Shot Learning in Airspace Research and Development

The advancement of Air Mobility, particularly in the context of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and Urban Air Mobility (UAM), represents a transformative shift in aviation's role in modern society. A comprehensive understanding of requirement consistency is paramount for fostering interoperability, standardization, and cost-effectiveness within airspace systems. This paper introduces a novel approach utilizing a pretrained Sentence Transformers model and few-shot learning to address this crucial aspect task of flagging potentially inconsistent requirements. Few-shot learning supports the development of this future through ensuring the accuracy and consistency of identified requirements with little human oversight. This approach offers a promising solution to the challenges of requirement consistency identification in airspace systems. By harnessing the power of advanced NLP techniques with fine-tuned models, stakeholders can enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability; ultimately fostering improved interoperability, standardization, and cost-effectiveness in airspace management.

Natural Language Processing↗

NASA NTRS2006

The Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation: A Summary of Conducted Research on the International Space Station

The Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI) is being conducted in the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with the goal of understanding bubble generation and interactions during controlled directional solidification processing. Through the course of the experiments, beginning in September 2002, a number of key factors pertinent to solidification processing of materials in a microgravity environment have been directly observed, measured, and modeled. Though most experiments ran uninterrupted, on four separate occasions malfunctions to the PFMI hardware and software were experienced that required crew intervention, including in-space repair. Fortunately, each repair attempt was successful and restored the PFMI apparatus to a fully functional condition. Based on PFMI results and lessons learned, the intent of this presentation is to draw attention to the role ISS experiments/hardware can play in providing insight to potential fabrication processing techniques and repair scenarios that might arise during long duration space transport and/or on the lunar/Mars surface.

Grugel, R. N.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA’s MBSE Approach for Advanced Air Mobility

NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) has a significant research effort for advanced air mobility (AAM). AAM involves bringing aviation closer to where people live and work and offers the possibility of making aviation a normal part of everyday life. The scope of AAM is broad, including transformations in aircraft, airspace operations, and in how these new aviation capabilities will integrate into local communities. Due to the nature of AAM cutting across multiple aspects of the aircraft, airspace, and community domains, NASA is applying tools and techniques aligned with a model-based systems engineering approach. These are intended to capture and organize applicable system architectures and potential requirements in order to deliver a validated system architecture and recommended set of requirements that enable sustainable and scalable medium density AAM operations.

Advanced Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Generic Urban Air Mobility Simulation

This research presents a simulation framework for autonomous research for a UAM vehicle using the NASA Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology Lift+Cruise concept vehicle. Our research results were produced using the open-source, six degree of freedom, rigid-body, nonlinear generic urban air mobility (GUAM) simulation. The intent of this paper is to demonstrate the GUAM simulation and a series of Challenge Problems that our researchers have posed to the broader autonomous vehicle research community. Our team has developed the GUAM simulation for the express purpose of providing a high-fidelity transition vehicle dynamics model to foster collaboration and algorithm performance comparison across research teams. In this paper, we demonstrate some of the autonomous flight research challenges and some of our current approaches to tackling basic autonomous flight tasks (e.g., trajectory following, stationary and moving obstacle avoidance). Additionally, we propose some flight metrics to assess autonomous algorithm performance while accomplishing these basic autonomous tasks.

autonomous flight↗

NASA NTRS2003

NASA GRC/Aeronautics Overview

Twenty-first-century aeropropulsion and power research will enable new transport engine and aircraft systems including: 1) Emerging ultralow noise and emissions with the use of intelligent turbofans; 2) Future distributed vectored propulsion with 24-hour operations and greater community mobility; 3) Research in hybrid combustion and electric propulsion systems leading to silent aircraft with near-zero emissions; and 4) The culmination of these revolutions will deliver an all-electric- powered propulsion system with zero-impact emissions and noise and high-capacity, on-demand operation

Sehra, Arun K.↗