XPONENTIAL 2024: Integrating Wind and Weather Hazard Data into Airspace Management and UTM Systems

XPONENTIAL 2024: Integrating Wind and Weather Hazard Data into Airspace Management and UTM Systems

Kraettli Epperson from Vigilant Aerospace Systems.
I’m the CEO and Co-founder and I’m going to talk about integrating wind and weather hazard data into existing airspace management, detect and avoid systems for safety and collision avoidance and then ultimately UTM systems.
So we are very much in the operationalization business.

So I’m excited that there’s been a lot of discussion about that.

We’re not in the data collection business generally, although there’s a certain amount of data collection that our system can facilitate.

And we’re definitely not in the wind and weather hazard modeling business.

We’re very much a consumer of those sorts of services, which is why I’m so excited to present here where there are a lot of people that do that and can help out with beginning to solve this problem.

So in order to write some background on our information to begin with, just a little bit of overview.

So you can see, when I say that we’re in the operational business operationalization, what that means to us, Talk about just a few projects we’re working on.
And then I’m talking about how we use weather in context now.

And I think that’ll be really interesting in the context of some of what we’ve heard about what’s being developed.

I’m going to going to talk a little bit about uncrewed traffic management or UTM systems.

How many of you all in here have heard of UTM?

So a lot of you have.

Good, excellent.

So I’m not going to spend a long time on that, but we’ll just talk about why the UTM and its emerging method for distributing data, managing airspace and managing UAS and advanced air mobility going into the future and providing much greater autonomy in the way that we manage our space.

And in air traffic management, we have a big opportunity to bring, begin to bring all this digital data in.

And then we’ll talk a little bit about some of the goals for the end users and the type of end users that we’re working with.

And then finally a brief discussion about some upcoming activities that we have going on and maybe some opportunities to participate and partner and get involved.
So companies Vigilant Aerospace Systems, our product is called FlightHorizon, it’s a standard based detect and avoid and UTM compatible airspace management system.

And as you see some screenshots you’ll understand what I mean by that.

It is multi sensor system can be hosted in the cloud.

We also have workstation and server versions that are installed various places, but it’s the cloud version that is most useful here obviously because you’re dealing with a lot of real time data based on two NASA patents that we license.

So we work with NASA Armstrong and have used those patents in the development of our product.

We’ve had projects, we have ongoing projects with NASA, FAA, several UAS test sites.

I know some of the test sites are here in the room and then we have multiple Air Force and civilian projects ongoing right now.

The system uses both local sensors and online data sources including FAA data and weather data in the system when those things are available.

System One, the NASA commercial invention of the Euro Ward in 2021.

So that was great recognition for us and has really helped our mission.

This is a screenshot with some labels just so you understand the basics.

We’re talking about aerospace management with integrated standard based detect and avoid.

We’re talking about tracking where a UAS or an AM aircraft is located at all times in the system providing this hockey puck shape, which is your wealthier distance that the UAS would need to maintain from other aircraft in three dimensions.
A in Max, so a near, mid air collision distance in the middle there.
And then other aircraft that are coming into the airspace and what their trajectories are projected to be for those aircraft so that the system can provide a resolution advisor.

So this is actually using a CAS SXU as its algorithms from the FAA so that you’ve got a standard command to do that avoidance.
So this is really basic collision avoidance and the question becomes how do you add other hazards into a system like this?
Well it’s been very long on this, but there’s a couple of things I want to point out.
This is just a system diagram of how the data moves into the system.
The software sits in the middle.
We’re primarily a system integrator so and a software developer.
So we pull in the data from the flight controller, from radars, from transponder receivers and then we also pull in real time data.
And something that was discussed a lot today is pulling in information from supplemental data service providers.
So there are emerging technical standards for how SPSPS provide and publish that data, The accuracy and precision which that data has to be provided, how you report that in the metadata and then how it becomes useful for a service like ours to be able to use it as an embedded part of the safety service that we’re providing.
So that’s a really important part of this that comes in here.
This is a NASA aerospace manager here actually using our system for some supersonic test flights that they use it for pretty frequently.
They were actually tracking their TFR in the location of the aircraft very briefly.
I just mentioned a couple of projects, the NASA ULI Wind Map project which is organized by OSU and Jamie Jacob is here, has been helping to lead that is a project that we’ve been involved in and we’re reaching the end stages of that.
I’ll talk about that a little bit and are eager for implementation of a lot of the research that is going on.
We’re also building the new onboard detective void system for the Air Force’s new secret drone and that’s going to obviously eventually want to have things like weather hazard available in systems like that.
We’ve also done contracts with the FAA Northern Plains UAS test site has one of our servers for example, and then we have some other projects that we’ve done.
So I’m going to show a few screenshots here very briefly.
So our system is a fully standards compliant GIS system.
In addition to having the real time sensor data and the edge network components to pull that data and parse it, normalize it across all the other systems and then use it in our system so that it can display for example trajectories and show you where you need to move to avoid.
But it can also display a lot of map layers.
And so we have for example the FAA’s obstacle layer in here.
We have airspaces in 2D and 3D.
So you can look at those airspaces.
We have the ability to geofence and it’s the emergence from that geofencing capability.
Either you must stay in this area, this is your authorized operational area or you must stay out of this area.
You’re not allowed to fly over this area.
It’s sensitive.
All of those capabilities are built in because it’s the GIS system and it will provide the same sort of warnings on those things.
So what we are planning to do and I want you to imagine is the ability to bring in wind and weather hazard data in real time the same way that we bring in other data and displayed in this system as a hazard.
And then eventually to have fully automatic avoidance the way we have collision avoidance now where we’re producing A standards compliant avoidance maneuver or resolution advisory that can be implemented either by the remote pilot or by the autopilot.
So we can send that out as in the form of the autopilot commands that that system can use.
We want to do the same for weather hazards, particularly micro weather hazards.
Just some other pictures here.
This is weather again, this is mostly National Weather Service weather that we’re displaying in context where you have 3 dimensional airspaces depicted, for example, and you have actual air traffic depicted in this picture.
This is a real, you know, live, live picture of air traffic in the US.
Here’s another one more complex airspace.
I think this one is actually, yeah, this is DFW where you’ve got that weather again being displayed and significant air traffic here.
With the idea being that as we add more higher resolution data to the lower altitude from a lot of the work and studies that were discussed here, we’ll be able to bring that data in and provide it as a hazard to be avoided.
So one of the exciting things about doing this type of work is the opportunity to begin to make this, this system and all of its capabilities available much more broadly to users who really don’t have to make the investment up front, don’t have to do the science experiment of integrating all these systems.
And they can begin to use this through a UTM system to which they do they subscribe.
And so by having standards based data distribution and protocols for sharing data and the standards that that data has to meet as published in the metadata about that data source, you can begin to share that across a very broad user base using UTM.
Our system is UTM compliant.
I’ll show you a little bit about that.
Most of you I think have heard of UTM.
So you’re familiar with this idea, but it’s the idea of being able to share the same way that when you pick up your cell phone and call a friend, you don’t need to know where the tower is.
You can be driving in your car and hit multiple towers.
You don’t need to know anything about your friend’s plan or their subscription of their phone.
There’s infrastructure in place, it is shared, it is built to standards and you can talk to each other without thinking about it.
All you need is a phone number.
The idea of UTM, which NASA initiated the idea of is to have that sort of network available with supplemental data service providers and USS UN crude services suppliers providing that as part of the overall cell phone network basically.
And so that’s one way that you would publish this and that is the end point for a lot of what we do and where we see wind and weather hazard data entering the system and being operationalized in real time.
So our system has UTM functions built in.
You can use it as a stand alone UTM server which we have some drone ports and others using so that they can be in to experiment with this.
But the real power occurs when your UTM server, your USS service can interact with other USS services and providers without needing your end user to know anything about those organizations that they’re interacting with and participating with.
And you can begin to provide this subscribe data, whether it’s a radar source for tracking non cooperative aircraft or ADSP sources, FAA sources, or ultimately of course wind and weather hazard sources that can come into a system like this, be published and be used as part of your overall safety scheme in real time, right.
So that’s why we’re really excited about this.
So what are some opportunities that that distributing the data this way presents to the industry.
So real time data distribution with a fully digital and highly automated environment and infrastructure is obviously opportunity #1 and that’s been talked about a lot here.
That’s very much what we want to see in order to make this happen and to make these systems really available.
It’s highly scalable and can be highly resilient because it can be hosted in the cloud with backup local servers and systems, and they can all talk to each other using these standards.
You really can begin to distribute this and at least if you have localized data, you can continue to operate even if there are disruptions or things that need to be routed around in the system.
Overall, that’s a huge advantage for when the weather hazard data, as I’m sure you can imagine, is to build that resiliency into the system.
The other thing that has is it has contingency planning built in.
So when you’re using this system, you have requirements about contingencies about where, for example, you might land your aircraft in an emergency, what things your aircraft is required to get out of the way of all the time for example.
And all those things can be built in and weather hazards can have an impact on that And obviously increase an opportunity for multiple cooperating vendors based on the industry technical standards to be able to use these systems with each other seamlessly and sort of a wide variety of aircraft missions and different types of operations.
And then finally common data quality format distribution standards.
I’ll talk about that just a little bit more that was hit on a little bit earlier and is really important.
So we think about this, what are some of the integration considerations?
So obviously very high on that list, women and how a hazard is declared.
What’s a hazard?
It’s going to depend obviously, a lot on the type of aircraft you’re flying, the certification of the aircraft, but it’s allowed to fly in, and the system has to be aware of that and can be aware of that to provide you information about the hazard that’s relevant to your aircraft and your flight.
By having this tracking and the idea that you’ve got these waypoints and that you can automatically avoid those hazards as a part of the overall system, you can begin to have a level of awareness and real discretion about using that data which can dramatically improve efficiency, right?
There’s some things you can fly through, some things you can’t.
Depending on what you’re flying and what the conditions are, there are significant data exchange considerations.
Geo Jason was mentioned earlier.
One of the reasons that we use Geo Jason is that you can stream data in real time using Geo Jason.
We use Jason as a format in many of our systems, clearly moving data back and forth from sensors.
And so that’s one of the advantages of Geo Jason.
It is an OGC compliant data source when it’s used as part of an API.
There was a question about that earlier and so I’ll just mention that when it’s used as part of an API, which are very commonly is it, it can be an OGC standard where it can be a way to implement into an API other OGC standards.
So obviously the ability of understanding the time and latency of that data.
There’s something that we do with sensors all the time now some sensors that aren’t you know 11 hurts and some of them are a lot faster.
And so we have to deal with that in a way that our system integrates those sensors and fuses that data and then understanding in the metadata the accurate accuracy and precision of that data is very important in implementing these things.
So there is mentioned earlier, we talked very much about the, the new weather information provider standard that’s been published.
I know Donna’s working in a new group for the next version of that.
Very excited to see the outcome of that.
And someone was mentioning to me earlier that is that moves towards an API that’ll be something that we’ll be excited to implement immediately as providers can begin to feed us that API data, which is a way for us to consume that data very quickly and know what we’re getting.
So for a system like this, what, what are the goals?
So the goals of these sorts of integration projects for us is to bring in authoritative real time as SDSP providers, so to pull that data directly into our system as I was just describing.
That’s really our goal in working with SDSPS, we want to be able to demonstrate effectiveness.
These are some pictures from some actual field test.
One of these is an FAA project that we did in Alaska with the Quasi, the test site there.
Another is some testing that we did again with a larger radar actually at Northern Plains UAS test site in in North Dakota.
And so we we’re very much interested in operationalizing this data as it’s available, particularly helping to develop the ability to pull those API data sources in and then ultimately the ability to roll out a national data-driven and automatic wind and weather hazard system for UAS, particularly AAM operators as well.
So the end users that we are targeting right now, I’ll talk about a few projects a little bit, are drone ports.
So places where people are already operating are already flying UAS at greater and greater distances and for a wide variety of missions and then corridors which are being developed in a variety of places right now Verta ports for advanced their mobility somewhere of the cargo or air taxi aircraft that’s taking off from a vertiport, maybe an urban vertiport.

These are also needing systems like this and very much need to wind and weather hazard data.
Particularly now agricultural and industrial operators are already in this business and are really already trying to solve these problems on a day-to-day basis and then delivery.
Drone operators are a big one for this type of system because of all the variables and they need to operate in all types of weather.
Just some photos from some recent projects.
On the upper left here we’ve got a roll out and some system testing we’re doing with the drone port.
We’re going to be doing an announcement about that.
We have several drone ports that we’re working with in the to the right hand side at the top there.
That’s some recent testing that we did with Oklahoma State University in O Air under a state contract.
And so I’ll just mention the importance of public private partnerships that were emphasized.
We benefit from that and all of this infrastructure obviously has a strong public sector component that will be impacting it and enabling it.
On the left hand side, we have the roll out of our server with Northern Plains UAS test site which they continue to use and there’s a couple of radars attached to that.
And then on the right hand lower side here we’ve got some supersonic test flights with NASA using our system for doing safety for flights actually off the Gulf Coast.
All right, So some upcoming activities we do have the NASA ULI WINDMAP demonstration flights which were mentioned earlier and these are going to be in Tulsa in September 2020.
So we’re looking forward to those.
We’re seeking real time data providers for those and have some partners lined up.
But I think after Sri that would be a really interesting opportunity if you want to come out and see systems like this in the field.
We have lots of other opportunities if you want to come out and see it as well.
But that’s one that we’re targeting particularly and particularly pulling in weather data for that.
We’re also working with drum ports and we’re very much seeking drum ports addition to the ones that we’re working with now.
We’re seeking U, UTM and detective with solutions as places where we can begin to pilot particularly weather hazard data and do standards based service delivery.

So thank you all very much.
I am happy to provide some type of questions.
Yeah.
Have you looked at participating in the FA as key site operational evaluation?
Yes.
So one thing I had on my list of things to mention that was done on my presentation.
We have some Intapp partners and they’re we’re not quite sure they have different places they may operate key site might be one of those.
Intapp is really important for all of this to work.
The FAAA, the idea of creating a path and a process that service providers like us and other sorts of SDSPS can get involved in to have certainty that there’s a process that we can get to our system can meet certain standards to be usable for different types of variable risk operations.
I had a question going back to your previous slide just for more of a clarification.
So for the NASA ULA Wind map demonstration, is that part of the?
I saw a flight week or is that separate from the flight week in September as well?
Ask Jamie back, I don’t, I don’t know the answer to that.
I think we’re my company is still in planning, they may know better than I do.
Jamie, I was just curious if that was part of the Flight League campaign or is that separate?
It’s still under discussion with us currently, the plan.
And so if you’re interested, we’ll be able to conduct the flight campaign.
The other point is that the as part of the WMO demonstration campaign, which is linked with slightly, we are making that data collected by UAS available in real time.
And so that could be a mechanism that you could pull that data.
I took notes throughout the presentation.
Yeah, I’m very interested in that.
Most of this was obviously UTM related, but you had one for what that said Vertiports and AAM, can you push that out?
Yeah.
So Vertiports as primary operating points and AAM generally are expected to want to use similar data sets to what we’re discussing and are being developed for UAS because they are smaller, newer types of aircraft, they tend to tend to be operating at a lower altitude.
There’s going to be strong overlaps and there’s already strong overlaps in the development of aerospace management between the UTM folks and the AAM folks.
That’s already happening where we see it as a company is in detect and avoid.
So a percentage of our business is very much AAM, it’s larger UAS.
So those are military.
Many of those are commercial where we’re developing detect and avoid systems.
But the reality is if you have better wind and weather hazard data that you can feed real time into an automatic airspace management system.
We think that’s going to be very valuable to AAM operators to be for the types of short hops that at lower altitude that we expect they’re going to be, we do it.
We work with some of those companies and we actually do extensive simulation and modeling of those flights and collision avoidance.
So those flights and the types of sensors and where they need to be in order to do collision avoidance effectively.
And so bringing that wind and weather hazard data in to those same sorts of simulations as the aircraft and the support systems are being developed, we think would be invaluable.
So do you use, do you use authoritative detect and avoid sources for you know for incorporating some of the supplemental things like an ASR 9 in.
Do you anticipate incorporating a similar process to validate some of the supplemental weather data sources?
Yeah, we’d like to as those standards emerge.
So we do use data and we integrate for example with the ASR DAS R11 and ASR 11 in a very few circumstances, right.
So those are intended for you know higher altitude for air traffic management and a lot of our customers of course are flying at lower altitude and are doing either on board or ground-based networks for detect and avoid, right.
And so there’s we, we integrate Asrs and Dassers when needed or where that’s appropriate which a few places it is, but mostly we’re actually deploying systems or using systems from an SPSP.
We’re actually providing as an SPSP lower altitude radars, digital 3D radars that are intended for doing air traffic surveillance in order to feed the system.
So those are that’s the reason INTAP and other things like it are so important is that there’s a path for those sorts of infrastructure and infrastructure providers like us to begin to have a routine path not just waivers, not just exemptions for specific types of flights, point A to point B, but have broader of authorizations standards help with that becoming a means of compliance so that the FAA can certify that essentially as a system and then go through a near term approval process for those types of systems are all things that the FAA is working on to make all of that easier.
That be a similar pathway process then for some of the supplemental weather and wind information.
Yeah, we hope, we would hope that would be the case and I don’t know somebody else may know better than I.
If the FAA has gone ahead and incorporated the weather into for example in TAP.
Thank you all.