Routine Autonomous Multi-Aircraft Operations Working Group Meeting Summary March 2026

From March 3 through March 5, 2026, the Routine Autonomous Multi-Aircraft Operations (RAM-AO) Working Group and its subgroups met at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA for their biannual, in-person meeting.

The Working Group seeks to join stakeholders from government, industry, and academia in a mission to identify and reduce barriers to autonomous, multi-aircraft operations. The RAM-AO focus of the Working Group focus was on advancing five white papers on:

• Interventions & Exceptions (I&E)

• Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS)

• Scalable Remote Crew Design Considerations for Multi-Aircraft Operators and,

• Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)

• System of Systems Design for Multi-Aircraft Operational Integration in Non-Segregated Airspace

• Assurance, Validation, and Verification (AV&V) – Adrian Agogino (NASA)

In addition, talks and discussions were held on:

• NASA’s new Air Traffic Management & Safety (ATMS) Project

• Joby’s perspective on the challenges and enablers to autonomy

• Upcoming research between NASA and Wisk on air traffic management (ATM),

• A collaborative effort on trust in learning-enabled tools for safety assurance,

• The results from a study of human factors in UAS traffic management (UTM),

• Standards and safety bodies working towards autonomous operations

• Insights on the future of autonomous operations from Reliable Robotics

Attendees were also able to tour NASA’s Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) and Airspace Operations (AOL) laboratories, as well as Zipline’s operations in South San Francisco, CA.