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The Future of UAM, UTM, and NextGen

    With increasing need for better transportation capabilities around the world Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is becoming an important technological improvement.  For UAM to be successful, a new airspace structure must be created for the National Airspace System (NAS).  Currently, the NAS operates under see and avoid doctrine and radar.  UAS have a disadvantage because they are unable to operate under see and avoid doctrine.  The greatest challenge to incorporating UAS in the NAS is determining a doctrine that allows for deconfliction between UAS assets. The FAA has a few initiatives that are helping improve this system.  

    NextGen is a new FAA system that uses multiple technologies to keep 3 dimensional location on aircraft. This is extremely important when manned and unmanned aircraft are operating in the same airspace. NextGen helps to develop communications between ground control stations, humans, and UAS to provide safe, reliable tracking throughout the flight (NextGen, 2021).

    Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) is being utilized to ensure that aircraft can communicate with each other, even if they lose signal with ATC (Allen, B., 2021). UTM allows manned and unmanned aircraft to receive telemetry information to ensure that aircraft are not on a collision course. This directly relates to Detect, Sense, and Avoid (DSA) Systems. DSA is used to authorize and track UAS flights out of specific locations. This is used instead of see and avoid since there is no personnel in the aircraft. Algorithms and sensors help to identify threats near the UAS and determine a new flight path. This technology is extremely important because it takes human factors out of the problem. This is an effective way to have UAS operate in dense airspace.

    All of these improved technologies help to prevent aircraft from losing signal. If an aircraft loses signal, human operators must get involved to try and find where that aircraft has went. They also must direct other aircraft away from where the lost UAS was last seen. In this high stress situation, there is potential for mistakes to be made. Any of these mistakes could have catastrophic consequences. These improvements make for a much safer ride in the sky.


References

Allen, B. (2021). NASA X: Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management. NASA.  https://www.nasa.gov/mediacast/nasa-x-unmanned-aircraft-system-traffic-management

FAA. (2020). Modernization of U.S. Airspace.  Federal Aviation Administration.  https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/

NextGen. (2021).  NextGen UAS Research, Development, and Demonstration Roadmap.  Next Generation Air Transportation System.  https://fas.org/irp/program/collect/uas-nextgen.pdf



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