Researchers from the
Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL), in conjunction with PAAV research and Human Autonomy Teaming (HAT) Lab teams, led a tabletop exercise from June 24-28, 2020 for the Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) project, gathering feedback from subject-matter experts in order to identify potential issues for Air Traffic Controllers as medium-sized uncrewed cargo aircraft are integrated into the National Airspace System (NAS).
The Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) team guided nine subject-matter experts through a week-long discussion of potential impacts to Air Traffic Control (ATC) as a result of the integration of unmanned medium-sized cargo operations into the NAS.
A bowtie risk-assessment methodology was used to structure the analysis, and focused the discussions on hazards that may occur, their causes and potential outcomes, as well as existing mitigations to reduce risk. In the event that existing mitigations did not adequately reduce the risk of a particular hazard or outcome event, possible future mitigations were also explored. Technological improvements, standardized procedures, and ATC and UAS-operator training were among the most frequent proposed future mitigations. Results from this exercise will be used to guide the development of a Concept of Operations for UAS integration into the NAS, as well as inform the selection of research topics for future human-in-the-loop simulations.
