NASA-Uber X2 Engineering Evaluations
October 17, 2019
X2 engineering simulation of NASA and Uber operations in a common airspace.
NASA, in collaboration with Uber, completed a series of engineering evaluations of the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) air traffic management (ATM) system, September 30 to October 3, 2019. These UAM simulations, known as “X2,” were built upon the capabilities developed for NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) system and Testbed, and were enhanced by NASA’s Air Traffic Management Exploration (ATM-X) project’s UAM team to meet the increased density, tempo, and complexity of anticipated UAM operations.
During the X2 activity, consisting of 19 simulation runs, NASA and Uber submitted operations for different sets of flights, resulting in hundreds of simulated vehicles within a common airspace. Uber’s lab was remotely connected to NASA’s X2 airspace management system, which will be further extended for NASA’s UAM Grand Challenge (GC) testing.
NASA algorithms for scheduling and separation were evaluated in X2, and the early results show that the algorithms were able to maintain safe separation and establish efficient operations, with the exception of a few select situations due to uncertainties in the simulated UAM trajectories. In addition, the teams gained insights with respect to using the UTM system architecture as a basis for UAM operations. These findings are being documented for the benefit of the GC effort and the broader UAM community.
The ATM-X project is committed to deliver a lab-tested, UAM airspace system backbone for GC activities, and performing laboratory testing/simulation of scenarios with GC partners prior to flight testing. The X2 activity with Uber reduces risk and expedites the future integration of GC partners for future activities.
(POC: Savita Verma)
Dashboard summary of NASA and Uber operations in X2 engineering simulation.
NASA team monitoring and documenting status of X2 engineering simulation.