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Active TRL 4 (started at 3, targeting 6)
There is a desire from industry stakeholders to utilize uncrewed aircraft to address increasing air cargo operations and current pilot shortages. Remotely piloted, mid-sized uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) for cargo operations present both known and unknown challenges for the safety and efficiency of the existing air traffic management system. NASA's Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) subproject will develop concepts, procedures, and technology to enable airspace access for air cargo operations with targeted autonomy in lower complexity airspace shared with conventional aircraft.
The PAAV subpject is executed by the Air Traffic Management Exploration Project in NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP). AOSP conceives, develops, and demonstrates technologies to safely improve aircraft systems that will operate in the National Airspace System (NAS). The program develops advanced technologies for a service‑oriented and federated NAS architecture to enable seamless integration of emergent vehicles (e.g., unmanned aircraft systems and advanced air mobility vehicles) with present-day aircraft. AOSP also works with other Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate programs to define safe NAS operational requirements for the next generation of vehicles, mature new transformative concepts, and demonstrate integrated systems.
A primary goal of the PAAV subproject is to outline a seamless and scalable progression to integrate these kinds of operations into the National Airspace System (NAS) with minimal disruptions to current-day operations. PAAV will enable resilient air cargo operations that are compatible with conventional operations, including replacing pilot tasks to support lost communications link contingencies that is scalable to high levels of autonomy. Through persistent flight testing, PAAV will collect data to derive the digital information requirements and performance assessments of the standards needed to enable remotely supervised air cargo operations.
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