Deloitte LLP has announced that it has earned a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop a Concept of Operations (ConOps) for urban air mobility (UAM). NASA is working on developing a broad approach to integrating different air vehicles into the National Airspace (NAS), as drones sharing the same airspace as traditional manned aircraft becomes a reality. This project with Deloitte is scheduled to last approximately twelve months, and will include the development of an initial ConOps to be shared with the broader aviation and urban air mobility communities.

“With much change happening in aviation, NASA is being smart by asking what all of this change means to mobility and what will be needed to safely accommodate new air vehicles in our air transport system,” said Chris Metts, specialist executive, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “What we love about this project is that it brings together our future of mobility work at the local, state and federal government level with our private-sector aerospace and systems engineering experience. It also allows us to collaborate with NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and industry in this most important, foundational activity for the future of aviation. Due to that mix of work, we could demonstrate a distinctive set of skills, capabilities and understanding of the changing aviation landscape.”

“Because of the rapid pace of change, developing a vision of urban air mobility requires practical knowledge of global aviation ecosystem as well as experience with disruptive change other commercial sectors,” said Matt Metcalfe, managing director, Deloitte Consulting LLP, future of aviation and urban air mobility leader. “We have developed an advisory team of key global aviation and mobility leaders across Deloitte’s global aviation business as well as industry, federal and local government, and academia. They will provide tremendous insight and will help us shape a ConOps.”

Urban Air Mobility

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have already entered a crowded NAS, and proposal for the best methods of UTM – Unmanned Traffic Management – have begun to emerge. The USA currently has the Integration Pilot Program in operation to trial different use cases of drones in the airspace across the country, testing the different features of drone flights that are currently only available by explicit waivers – such as flying Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLoS). NASA is scheduled to take over the role of UTM fully in the coming years.

Air taxis and deliveries of consumer goods, food, and medicine are slated to be the most popular uses of drones, which will bring UAVS into contact with the UAM ecosystem. Approximately 80% of the potential users of UAM vehicles will be located in large urban areas, which fall under Class B airspace (Class Bravo)¹.  This is the most heavily restricted classification of airspace management, used to define the airspace surrounding the country’s busiest airports. Aircraft must obtain clearance to enter Class Bravo airspace and establish two-way radio communication with ATC. Everything that happens inside Bravo airspace is monitored. Bringing an extra set of vehicles into this space brings a set of new challenges.

Regulators and drivers

The primary driving force behind regulating urban airspace is the incoming air taxis and drone-based delivery flights that will need safe integration. This comes alongside increasing rates of use of traditional manned aircraft, with business jets making a comeback. However, there is no adequate infrastructure to accommodate the new players in the airspace – heliports, vertiports and so on – nor is the regulation of maintenance and certification sufficient for purpose. Full modernisation of the system is widely agreed as necessary. But asking regulators such as the FAA or EASA to undertake this at no extra cost is unlikely to be fruitful, as most of these regulators around the world are government agencies or not-for-profit private corporations. It would be a case of asking them to increase their workload at an exponential rate to maintain the same levels of safety and reliability, all with no real added benefit to them as regulators. A difficult task.

For this reason, the drivers behind the upcoming changes to the system are not going to be from the traditional aviation stakeholders and government agencies. The larger companies in the private sector will instead lead the way, leveraging public pressure to create the need for a political act to reform the legal framework, something difficult for the regulating agencies to do on their own. Companies such as Boeing and Airbus have already embraced this new role and have initiatives aimed at developing proof-of-concept UTM proposals to send to regulators and Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) to convince them that a new system will be affordable without sacrificing safety, and will allow for future growth volume.

_{1. Understanding Urban Air Mobility: How Airplanes, Air Taxis and Drones Will Co-Exist in the National Airspace, Juan B. Plaza (Commercial UAV News)}

Leading the way

NASA's Grand challenges

Although not an independent private company NASA is expected to take a strong hand in future UTM in America. To this end, it has set up the first in a series of UAM Grand Challenges, a UAM ecosystem-wide challenge for the participants to execute system level safety and integration scenarios within the relevant environment, with the aim of promoting public confidence in UAM safety and facilitating community-wide learning. NASA will be working with different industry partners to develop a safe and commercial operating capability.

Boeing: The Skygrid Initiative

Boeing announced a partnership with SparkCognition in 2018 to begin researching the best approaches around modernising ATC (Air Traffic Control), with a view to adding the non-traditional vehicles of unmanned aircraft and air taxis to the NAS. The new company SkyGrid has been tasked with the development of a safe UTM software system, to integrate both autonomous cargo and passenger vehicles into the global airspace. The system will track drones as they fly through designated traffic corridors. It will also incorporate a standardised programming interface to support package delivery, industrial inspection and other commercial applications. SparkCognition has also been utilising blockchain and cognitive computing to develop an automated platform to keep drones on track.

INVOLI

Swiss company INVOLI has joined the Swiss U-Space network, a nationwide collaborative programme for safely and securely integrating drones into the national airspace system launched in 2017 by Skyguide, Switzerland’s air navigation services provider. INVOLI will contribute its low altitude drone air traffic data management systems, gathering data through a network of in-house developed detection devices deployed throughout the country.

The non-cooperating surveillance system does not require fitting sensors to the drone or aircraft and relies on a decentralised network of ground-based detection devices housed in existing infrastructure, such as Swisscom cell towers or the rooftops of Swiss Prime Site properties. The technology detects aircraft in real-time, especially low-flying platforms – including helicopters, aircraft, gliders etc – which risk colliding with drones.

In partnership with Swisscom, the Swiss telecommunications company, pilot deployments of the INVOLI system are currently being tested in Switzerland for flight awareness purposes, especially in the low altitudes. The network – currently covering an area of around 10,000 square km – will be deployed throughout Switzerland by 2020.

Airbus UTM

In the document titled Blueprint for the Sky: The Roadmap for the Safe Integration of Autonomous Aircraft”, Airbus has made their proposal and detailed their view on how manned and unmanned aircraft will merge in the national airspace. This “new and improved” ATC + UTM system is being developed by A3, the Silicon Valley arm of Airbus, and it’s focused on providing regulators and ANSPs with alternatives to the current system in the face of the projected growth of the industry. Airbus introduces Basic Flight Rules (BFR) and Managed Flight Rules (MFR) as examples of the types of definitions and protocols that will need to be established in order for manned and unmanned aircraft to share the same controlled airspace. In the Airbus blueprint, ATM and UTM services will work together in areas of heavy traffic, such as Class B airspace, key to UAM.

The Blueprint was reviewed by a number of independent parties, including representatives from IATA, NATCA, GUTMA, the World Economic Forum and the New Zealand Ministry of Transport. It outlines a range of topics for a new age of flight, from stakeholder roles to air traffic configuration and system architecture.

EmbraerX UTM

Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer has created a new division called EmbraerX, with the manifesto to develop innovative and disruptive technologies to solve some of the world’s problems. Some of their current work is to create air traffic control products and services for countries on a global scale, not just Brazil. Embraer’s divisions are examining a new operations concept for a dedicated air management solution, specifically for Urban Air Traffic Management (UATM). With a fully owned air traffic control subsidiary, ATECH, they are developing this service, called Flight Plan 2030, to be autonomous within 10-15 years, stating that the conservative and phased approach towards autonomy will help to realise the safe scalability of the UAM industry.