Initial Study of An Effective Fast-time Simulation Platform for Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management

Small unmanned aircraft systems are envisioned to play a major role in surveilling critical assets, collecting data, and delivering goods. Large scale operations are expected to happen in low altitude airspace in the near future, where many static and dynamic constraints exist. High sensitivity to wind and high maneuverability are unique characteristics of these vehicles, which bring great challenges to effective system evaluations and mandate such a simulation platform different from existing simulations that were built for manned air traffic system and large unmanned fixed-wing aircraft. NASA’s Unmanned aircraft system Traffic Management (UTM) research initiative focuses on enabling fair, safe, and efficient unmanned aircraft system operations in the future. In order to help define requirements and policies for a safe and efficient UTM system to accommodate a large amount of unmanned aerial vehicle operations, it is necessary to develop a fast-time simulation platform that can effectively evaluate policies and concepts, and perform parameter studies in a close-to-reality environment. This work analyzed the impacts of some key factors and demonstrated the importance of these factors in a successful UTM fast-time simulation platform. Preliminary experiments were also conducted to show potential applications of such a platform.