Vertiport Human Automation Teaming Toolbox

Crown Consulting, Inc. in partnership with George Washington University and several industry leading expert consultants in heliport infrastructure propose to develop Vertiport Human Automation Teaming Toolbox (V-HATT). V-HATT is designed for real-time human-in-the-loop simulations for vertiport arrival, surface, and departure operations on the airside of a vertiport. Human-machine teaming is a core component of V-HATT, and the simulation toolbox will be designed to toggle various teaming strategies with differing degrees of automation to examine the teaming relationship performance. The Federal Aviation Administration anticipates the development of future guidance on advanced vertiport operations including autonomy and high tempo facilities. As vertiports grow in capability and complexity, managing operations will require innovative concepts that adapt to scale with vertiport operational complexity. V-HATT will assist researchers, operators, manufacturers, and infrastructure developers to understand realistic operational bottlenecks and vertiport capacity considering human roles. V-HATT can be decomposed by mission phases to illustrate the envisioned system capabilities. Pre-Mission: The Pre-mission phase includes simulation set-up, design, adjusting teaming relationship parameters, vertiport and airspace design, operaitonal rules, selecting weather conditions, and identifying potential off-nominal scenarios. Mission: The Mission phase includes running the simulation with a HITL to try and manage the flow of operations at a vertiport. A human vertiport operator will have controls that allow for scheduling, sequencing, and controlling arrival, surface, and departure traffic to ensure high-throughput operations at the vertiport. Post-Mission: The Post-mission phase includes conducting human factors analysis, conducting bottleneck analysis, and comparing runs to look at the data of how simulation configurations compare. Crown Consulting, Inc. in partnership with George Washington University and several industry leading expert consultants in heliport infrastructure propose to develop Vertiport Human Automation Teaming Toolbox (V-HATT). V-HATT is designed for real-time human-in-the-loop simulations for vertiport arrival, surface, and departure operations on the airside of a vertiport. Human-machine teaming is a core component of V-HATT, and the simulation toolbox will be designed to toggle various teaming strategies with differing degrees of automation to examine the teaming relationship performance. The Federal Aviation Administration anticipates the development of future guidance on advanced vertiport operations including autonomy and high tempo facilities. As vertiports grow in capability and complexity, managing operations will require innovative concepts that adapt to scale with vertiport operational complexity. V-HATT will assist researchers, operators, manufacturers, and infrastructure developers to understand realistic operational bottlenecks and vertiport capacity considering human roles. Phase II Technical Objectives Select and refine use cases that most represent the operational concepts and capabilities necessary for higher levels of operational traffic with the goal of defining a minimum viable product (MVP) suite of tools. Complete and implement V-HATT software architecture to meet the needs of vertiport operators for human-machine interactions with automated systems in an AAM environment. Develop human factors analysis suite of tools to allow researchers to create new vertiport operator interfaces and track human interactions with these interfaces. Test V-HATT to validate against user objectives and determine the technical feasibility of the selected operational concepts.   Phase II Deliverables Phase II Kickoff Meeting and Agreement with NASA on Scope of Work Refined Vertiport Operator User Interface Requirements and Use Cases Completed V-HATT Software Architecture and Implementation Simulation Experiment Results from Selected Operational Concepts Phase II Final Report    

NASA researchers could use V-HATT to investigate the human machine interactions with specific vertiport designs by creating different vertiport designs and analyzing human workload for each concept of operation. V-HATT is designed to integrate with existing vertiport interfaces already developed by NASA and other commercial operators. We intend to investigate joining the Air Traffic Management eXploration X-series. Other NASA applications may include supporting High Density Vertiplex, System Wide Safety, or AAM National Campaign. Primary target markets include: Heliports and Vertiport Operators Standards Development Organizations and Regulators Advanced Air Mobility Manufacturers and Airline Operators Training and Certification Organizations Crown is looking at integrating V-HATT into other commercial offerings, such as the Advanced Air Mobility Community Integration Platform (AAM-CIP) currently being developed.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 6) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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