The pressure on air navigation services and air traffic management to evolve at pace to meet sustainability and operational challenges has never been greater. In the context of net zero goals, the momentum behind artificial intelligence, and the autonomy and digitalisation megatrends, we sat down with Jolana Dvorska, senior research and development manager and architect for SESAR at Honeywell Aerospace to dive into two key European projects where the company is a partner, aiming to meet these objectives head-on.
Under the auspices of SESAR-JU — the single European sky air traffic management research joint undertaking, a European Union institution — Honeywell is working within two key projects, called DARWIN and OperA, Dvorska tells us.
“DARWIN,” she explains, “will address the need for scalable, interconnected and highly automated Single Pilot Operations, as a crucial foundational building block of the Digital European Sky. OperA will help develop technologies and operations in the advanced air mobility sector, and will enable these to start making its way to traditional aviation.”
DARWIN: Digital Assistants for Reducing Workload and INcreasing collaboration
DARWIN, Dvorska explains, “looks at AI-based automation for cockpit and flight operations as a key enabler for first the extended minimum crew operations and then single pilot operations. The project aims to develop AI-powered digital assistants and human-AI collaboration framework to support both extended minimum crew operations and single pilot operations, ensuring the same (or higher) level of safety and same (or lower) workload as operations with a full crew today.”
The goal is to balance future operational efficiency and the pilot shortage with safety and the increasing complexity of future airspace, and Honeywell is leading a consortium that includes regulators, research institutes, air navigation service provides, European institutions, airframers, and technology providers. Key partners include EASA, Eurocontrol, the German DLR research organisation, Slovenia Control and Pipistrel.
“With the anticipated need for higher autonomy comes the need for digital transformation and for both we need to build trust in AI-based solutions,” Dvorska says. “DARWIN is addressing this — to develop a scalable technological human-AI collaboration concept that can gradually introduce new functions and pilot assistants, in line with the EASA AI Roadmap. Human-AI teaming concept can integrate these components into one system supporting pilot in daily operations, in a similar way as they are used for current crew resource management functions — for example, monitoring, crosschecking, communication, or decisionmaking.”
There are three current sets of challenges the project is trying to address:
- ensuring that the cockpit workload remains manageable for a single individual, even in highly challenging scenarios like aircraft malfunctions
- replacing a second crosschecking set of eyes to independently verify the actions of the commanding pilot
- solving the key question about incapacitation during single-pilot operations
As part of resolving these challenges, Dvorska explains, “we will be further maturing key extended minimum crew operations and single pilot operation enablers: pilot state and task monitor, AI-driven digital assistants for connected and complex traffic environments and human-AI collaboration system defining clear roles and responsibilities — with human pilots remaining ultimate decision makers.”
OperA: OPERate Anywhere
OperA, Dvorska says, “stands for Operate Anywhere. Its ambition is to enable the safe accommodation of advanced air mobility aircraft in European Air Traffic Management and U-space — which is a set of new services relying on a high level of digitalisation and automation of functions and specific procedures designed to support safe, efficient and secure access to airspace for large numbers of drones.”
A key challenge is the intersection between current air traffic management environments and U-space, which SESAR defines as “a set of new services relying on a high level of digitalisation and automation of functions and specific procedures designed to support safe, efficient and secure access to airspace for large numbers of drones. As such, U-space is an enabling framework designed to facilitate any kind of routine mission, in all classes of airspace and all types of environment — even the most congested — while addressing an appropriate interface with manned aviation and air traffic control.”
Previously, the evolution of air traffic management and the development of U-space were considered separately, so OperA is aiming to integrate the two.
Key to the project’s remit is planning for the sheer scale of the expected numbers of uncrewed vehicles, operating independently in terms of missions and routes. The project consortium consists of both air and ground industries, including three major European eVTOL manufacturers, vertiport operators, air navigation and U-space service providers, and regulators, including Lilium, Pipistrel, Vertical Aerospace, ENAIRE, AENA, Skyports, Frequentis, LGS, ON, CRIDA, Eurocontrol, EASA and Nordic Unmanned.
“The project will develop and validate several advanced air mobility solutions addressing the ecosystem of manned air taxi and unmanned cargo cross-border operations,” Dvorska says. “It will specifically address air-ground integration and the critical transition from piloted towards automated flights. It will make use of several key autonomy-enabling technologies and will help to optimise flight routing for minimum noise footprint and aircraft energy utilisation.”
Focuses include more efficient and energy-reducing approach, ground control, high-integrity precision navigation, detect-and-avoid, airborne autonomy decision engines, and contingency management — all vital to both crewed air taxi operations and uncrewed missions such as cargo or medical drones.
Wider interconnecting and linked technology trends
More widely, understanding the way that the autonomy and digitalisation megatrends are intrinsically interconnected with the future of air traffic management — and with each other — will be crucial.
Around autonomy, Dvorska says, this includes “innovations that will enable the growing air traffic and handle the complexity of airspace, utilising and enhancing the amount of information to be processed, preparing the next generation of pilots with new skills and experience, and partnering with new entrants in the emerging advanced air mobility market to develop systems that will require more and more automation.”
In terms of digitalisation, she concludes, “hand in hand with higher autonomy, the industry will need to transform current air traffic management processes and operations for digital use, leveraging digital information and embracing the ability to collect data and make use of it — and the potential of artificial intelligence to help enable both autonomy and digital transformation.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 31 October 2023
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