The NASA Ames Aviation Systems Division researches, develops, and tests innovative solutions, including concepts, technologies, and procedures, to achieve the goals of the Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) and Advanced Mobility Pathfinders projects. This includes development of the Digital Information Platforms, Secure Airspace Architectures, incorporating System Wide Safety (SWS), digital twins, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and modeling and simulation (M&S) to enable Urban Air Mobility (UAM).
Crown’s role on the NAMS contract entails leadership, software (SW) engineering management, and subject matter expert (SME) guidance. We bring expertise in full stack SW development, Agile development methods, Amazon Web Services, and NASA Security Standards compliance. Our duties encompass partner engagement, foundational Airspace Technology Demonstrations (ATD), Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS), UAS Traffic Management (UTM), and UAM requirements, architecture, scenarios, testing, and collaborative demonstrations. Crown led seminal UAM studies (e.g., research on UAM separation standards and leveraging UAS concepts and tools); testbed and NAS Digital Twin (NDT) simulation platform; research proposals on separation challenges with federated architectures; SW development for ground and airborne scheduling research; full engagement in Software Development Management Plans (SDMPs), Systems Engineering Management Plans (SEMP), NASA Software Engineering Requirements (7150.2D) Compliance Matrix tracing, and review; and SW assurance planning, oversight, and reporting.
Benefit to NASA: Crown has supported ATD-1, ATD-2, ATD-3, UAS in the NAS, High Density Vertiplex, and UTM projects along with efforts under ATM-X project including the Digital Information Platform (DIP), ATM-X Testbed, and ATM-X NDT. For the ATM-X “X” series of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) experiments, Crown was integral in assisting NASA throughout the SW development lifecycle including use case development, requirements definition, SW design and development, and experimentation runs.
Crown’s support for NASA’s Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) project encompasses several key areas, including
- Leadership
- Software Management
- Software Assurance
- Subproject Cybersecurity
- Subproject Configuration Management
- System Architecture and Design
- Systems Engineering (in collaboration with LaRC)
- Collaborative Demonstration support
The Digital Information Platform (DIP) aims to accelerate the National Airspace System’s (NAS) transformation by providing advanced, data-driven, digital services, to promote efficient operations for the aviation community. DIP is an open platform providing secure, scalable, and highly available access to services from aviation service providers. It is an evolving platform that facilitates the addition, discovery, and adoption of services from existing and new market entrants. DIP provides NASA-developed digital aviation services, such as FUSER and CDDR (Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting), which have demonstrated value to the community through a series of collaborative demonstrations. Crown supports DIP compliance with NASA standards to facilitate technology transfer and open-source release.
AF Facilities support aims to provide common tools and services to support AF division research goals as well as collaborative studies with industry, academia, and FAA. A prime example is the NAS Digital Twin (NASDT) platform, based on Testbed, which supports localized and NAS-wide research in automation and autonomy. It provides various services such as conflict detection and resolution, trial planning, weather and volume avoidance, scheduling, flight modeling, and many others. Crown supports the platform and is developing/deploying NASDT services for integration with DIP.
Client
- NASA