TCL4 UTM (UAS Traffic Management) Nevada 2019 Flight Tests, Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) Report

The Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) research project has been developing and testing concept ideas for enabling small UAS (sUAS) operations in low altitude airspace (ground to 400 feet). To do this, NASA has organized a series of flight test demonstrations. Technology Capability Level-4 (TCL4) flight tests were conducted at a Nevada, USA test site, during June 2019. The testing resulted in over 300 data collection flights using eight live rotorcraft, 15 simulated vehicles, involving six flight crews and five Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Service Suppliers (USS). The TCL4 approach was designed to demonstrate five scenarios that set up five diverse sets of UAS events and activities. The Nevada test site focused on three of these scenarios: an incoming weather front, a concert event with an incident requiring an emergency response, and a scenario where multiple vehicles experienced Communication, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) issues. The test site created their scenarios to each have three phases and were required to complete three executions of each scenario, for a total of nine missions per Nevada vehicle per scenario. This document presents data collected from participants during the TCL4-Nevada flight test that provides information about how much and how well operators were able to make use of UTM functions and information, with the goal of exploring what the minimum information requirements and/or best practices might be in TCL4 operations. The driving enquiry was: how do UTM tools and features support (human) operators leading to safe and effective conduct of large-scale beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) sUAS operations in “urban canyon” environments? As with the data collected during previous similar tests (e.g., TCL3, Martin et al., 2019), the quality of the UTM information exchanged, and the meaningfulness and therefore usefulness of this information, were all focal points of the questions asked and the data collected. Data aligned with five human-system attributes to indicate that UTM provided information that contributed to users’ ability to operate safely and effectively within UTM, but that information was not always complete and was sometimes unclear.