Rapid Automated Mission Planning System

The proposed innovation is an automated UAS mission planning system that will rapidly identify emergency (contingency) landing sites, manage contingency routing, and dynamically evaluate route changes for viability and safe operations in the NAS. Specifically, RAMPS will feature a pre-flight contingency planning capability that rapidly determines viable alternate/emergency landing sites based on a UAS's contingency ability and safe routing restrictions. RAMPS will include an in-flight dynamic contingency management capability that assesses ATC-requested re-routing and threats posed by weather to determine feasibility of modifications to the UAS flight trajectory. RAMPS can operate as a recommender system, providing operators with a narrow list of best options to help facilitate timely decision-making. RAMPS capabilities will provide UAS Operators with valuable time saving examination of a proposed route and possible contingency operations along that route – automating what has been an exceptionally tedious and lengthy manual process during mission planning. The in-flight component of RAMPS will provide the UAS operator with a dynamic mission evaluation tool – exceptionally important when a reconnaissance and surveillance mission is introduced into the routing planning process.

Potential applications for the UAS contingency planning and management system beyond Phase II include use as a mission planning augmentation system to improve safety of NASA UAS flight operations and as a research and development tool supporting in-house simulations of UAS activity in the NAS. RAMPS will be interoperable with UAS flight management systems, enabling a fluid exchange of routing and contingency information with 3rd party applications. RAMPS will be applicable to ongoing integrated system research projects and will beneficially impact NASA's contributions to standardized safety and certification of UAS in the NAS.

RAMPS will find a significant number of applications within federal and non-federal agencies. Immediate customers include DoD UAS operators both within and beyond the NAS. Employed as a contingency management tool, RAMPS will plug-in to 3rd party UAS flight management systems and provide levels of intelligent automation that extend well beyond those provided in fielded systems. RAMPS will have high value to regulatory agencies approving UAS operations – such as approval of certificates of authorization (COAs). COA approvers could also establish the criteria to be used in RAMPS during mission planning for COA approval.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — 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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