Description: The Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) marketplace has seen rapid growth in recent years with hundreds of possible designs at varied stages of development. Many manufacturers are approaching the design problem under the presumption that each of their vehicles will include a pilot onboard. According to an AP News article from February 2023, the government estimates a shortage of ~30k airline pilots by 2032. Autonomous operation of these vehicles could help mitigate/eliminate the piloted need but only a small subset of designers is considering this as their entry point. The necessary autonomous technologies are currently not mature enough to meet this challenge and will be met with intense regulatory scrutiny. Without the ability to take in information from multiple sources and distill that to an actionable response, these vehicles will be limited in their operation scope. Alternatively, without a clear path to certify these new capabilities, the realization of an autonomous UAS/AAM system and its potential benefits will languish. As such, a team led by Systems Technology Inc. (STI), propose to address this problem through the development of Certification and Safety of In-Flight Multi-Objective Decision Making Algorithm Techniques (CERTIFICATE). CERTIFICATE will establish a robust certification approach and companion software-based toolset for multi-objective decision making (MODM) autonomous technologies and demonstrate this process with novel envelope protection (EP) schemes based upon neural control certificates and correct-by-construction software paradigms. Phase I established the system requirements and demonstrated the CERTIFICATE process using these novel techniques. At the conclusion of the Phase II program, a prototype of the CERTIFICATE software will have been developed and validated for supporting the certification of MODM systems. In addition, two MODM EP methods will have been advanced towards addressing increasingly complex and robust mission scenarios.

Benefits: The CERTIFICATE toolbox directly supports the goals of the NASA Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology Project. Here, CERTIFICATE directly supports the goal to “develop and validate tools, technologies and concepts to overcome key barriers for vertical lift vehicles.” Furthermore, CERTIFICATE will provide a means to support the NASA AAM National Campaign, which will provide “…vehicle manufacturers and operators, as well as prospective airspace service providers, insights into the evolving regulatory and operational environment.”

A study by Frost & Sullivan sees the UAM marketplace “expanding with a compound annual growth rate of about 46% to more than 430,000 units in operation by 2040.” There is a need for the new methods in CERTIFICATE to support the design, analysis, and certification of these vehicles. STI has relationships with a number of these companies from which an emerging customer base will be established.