Sensing Weather for Advanced Air Mobility

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is a concept for safe, sustainable, and accessible aviation for local and intraregional missions with the promise to change transportation and to bring aviation into people’s daily lives. To address a shortcoming of existing weather sensing systems, ASTM International (formerly known as the American Society for Testing and Materials) established the ASTM F38 standard to address the performance and interoperability requirements for weather data reports, analysis, and services for operations including uncrewed aircraft systems (UASs) and AAM end users. Within this standard, the Tier 2 level is unique in being the lowest performance tier that is able to measure the critical parameters for aviation: wind, ceiling, and visibility. To address the need for a commercially viable Tier 2 weather sensor suitable for AAM support, Intellisense has developed the Sensing Weather for Advanced Air Mobility (SWAAMI) system. This system will be the first commercial weather sensor specifically designed to meet all ASTM F3673-23 Tier 2 performance requirements and do so at a low cost that will promote widespread adoption and deployment and help enhance cost-effective, safe, and effective operational decision making. The SWAAMI system is based on a novel integration of existing breakthrough technologies. Specifically, Intellisense modified its existing Micro Weather Station (MWS®) product to include the latest in optical precipitation and present-weather sensing technologies to form the SWAAMI system, which is the first of its kind in a product category that will become essential to AAM operations. In the Phase I NASA effort, Intellisense not only fully realized the prototype system but also successfully demonstrated its effectiveness and accuracy against larger commercial references sensors in extended outdoor demonstrations. In Phase II Intellisense proposes to ruggedize and enhance the design in preparation for commercial producibility.

Potential NASA applications include Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), for which the SWAAMI system is expressly designed. In addition, the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) could utilize SWAAMI to enhance its models. GMAO provides support for NASA’s satellite observations, encompassing the need to examine the impacts of different observation types in weather and climate prediction and to simulate observations for temperature pressure, humidity, and wind to which SWAAMI applies. The FAA Aviation Weather Research Program (AWRP) researches applied weather to minimize the impact of weather on the National Airspace System (NAS) and to transition new or improved weather capabilities into evolving air traffic management decision support systems, incorporating them into the National Weather Service (NWS) to enhance aviation safety and efficiency, to which SWAAMI directly applies.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.