In June and August 2020, researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California conducted Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) flight tests of drone aircraft at Moffett Field at Ames. The purpose of the flight test was to investigate the feasibility of a concept called Time-Based Conformance Monitoring (TBCM). Conformance monitoring is an important task of air traffic controllers or UAS traffic management services that will be implemented in the future in which they monitor whether aircraft are adhering to their assigned flight trajectories. TBCM extends that concept by continuously evaluating the times required for aircraft to maintain those trajectories. For the tests at Moffett Field, five specifically designed flight profiles were successfully flown over 26 flights to gather data for the TBCM concept evaluation. This type of research is applicable to the burgeoning growth of UAS aircraft into areas such as package delivery and potentially even air taxis.
