PAAV Concept Document

The Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) Concept Document, version 1.0, lays out the key challenges and potential solutions for the use of uncrewed aircraft (UA) technology for future regional air cargo operations. The challenges and solutions described in this document were informed by communications with the UA industry community (e.g., RTCA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and regional air cargo business operators), as well as the PAAV team’s research activities during the last two years including four tabletop exercises, a human-in-the-loop simulation study, a numerical simulation study, a functional allocation study, and flight data analysis (Appendix A).

This document first describes the expected operational context of PAAV (Section 2), such as the flight mission, baseline UAS components, nominal operations, m:N operations (i.e., "m" remote pilots per "N" aircraft), and off-nominal operations. This context sets the scope for the PAAV concept development work. PAAV concept development assumes that UA operations will be increasingly autonomous. Thus, near- and far-term assumptions are defined (Section 3).

PAAV identified seven key challenges for UA operations (Section 4):
- Flight route planning
- Separation and flow management
- Traffic pattern integration
- Contingency management
- Taxi, takeoff, and landing
- m:N operations
- Communications operations

The following 13 potential solutions to these challenges are then described (Section 5):

- Scalable communications architecture
- Data link
- Designated UAS corridors
- Crew planning for m:N operations
- Flight route optimization
- Traffic load-level control
- Trajectory solutions with data link
- Automated hazard avoidance for m:N operations
- Traffic pattern integration (TPI) tool
- Standard lost command and control (C2) link (LC2L) procedures
- Automated hazard avoidance under LC2L
- Auto-taxi, auto-takeoff, and auto-land
- Ground control station (GCS) user interface for m:N operations

The document attempts to link each of these solutions to one or more of the challenge areas.

Novel solutions involving numerous automation technologies are needed to mitigate traffic and airspace management challenges, especially for realizing m:N operations and ensuring safety under LC2L conditions. The purpose of this document is to help understand alternatives and tradeoffs among potential solutions and provide a foundation for a cohesive PAAV concept that will be described and refined in subsequent concept versions.