SFNP-OPS DEMO 1

DIP Hosts Visit with Wisk Aero and SkyGrid at NASA/FAA North Texas Research Station (NTX), Fort Worth

April 3, 2024

On April 3rd, the Digital Information Platform (DIP) team hosted representatives from Wisk Aero and SkyGrid (both Boeing-affiliated companies) for a technical interchange meeting at NASA’s NTX Research Station. The DIP team provided an overview of the series of field demonstrations that the DIP team is conducting in support of NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP) mission. These demos are designed to highlight how decision support services for aviation can help improve the efficiency of operations both for traditional and non-traditional flight operators. The DIP overview was followed by demonstration of the Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting (CDDR) tool that is currently undergoing operational evaluations with air traffic control and airline partners in North Texas with plans to expand to the Houston area next year. The Wisk Aero and SkyGrid representatives shared information regarding their concept for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations and their plans for moving from concept to reality in the Houston area. NASA, Wisk Aero, and SkyGrid discussed potential areas of collaboration given all organizations have Houston-area activities planned.

FAA/AJM-2 Leadership Team Visits NASA NTX

April 4, 2024

On April 4th, the Digital Information Platform (DIP) team hosted members of the leadership team for the Air Traffic Systems Directorate (AJM-2) in the FAA’s Program Management Organization at NASA’s NTX Research Station. The AJM-2 leadership team requested this visit as part of their multi-day visit to North TX ATC facilities. The DIP team provided an overview of the series of field demonstrations that the DIP team is conducting in support of NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP) mission. The first of these demos features the Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting (CDDR) service which is currently being evaluated by air traffic control (ATC) and airline partners in North TX. The CDDR briefing included an in-depth discussion on the DIP team’s experience in transforming CDDR from a traditional on-premises and monolithic ATM decision support tool to a cloud-based and service-oriented architecture. Additionally, the DIP team described how artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models were employed to replace traditional physics-based algorithms for key portions of CDDR’s predictive engine. The AJM-2 leadership team is intimately familiar with the challenges of developing and maintaining the site adaptation required by traditional physics-based decision support algorithms, and they expressed interest in learning more about the maintainability, portability, and scalability benefits associated with the AI/ML approach being used by the DIP team. The briefing, demo, and discussion in the NTX lab were followed by a visit to American Airlines’ Integrated Operations Center (IOC) where the group was familiarized with airline operations and observed the CDDR tool in use by ATC coordinators.

DIP, PAAV, and Boeing Make Plans for Digital Taxi Testing

April 17, 2024

Digital Taxi Clearance is a part of the Ames Research Center (ARC) capability development exploration activity to support various Airspace Operations Safety Program/Air Traffic Management – eXploration (AOSP/ATM-X) projects and sub-projects. The concept is especially relevant to Digital Information Platform (DIP) and Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) sub-projects under ATM-X, as it enables a digital workflow end to end for a variety of aviation use cases (DIP) and safe remote pilot operations where digital data for IFR flight operations will be essential (PAAV).

On April 17th, a combined team of Boeing, DIP, and PAAV met at ARC and toured Moffett Field airport and the FutureFlight Central facility. Then, they used a white board to draw out the requirements to accomplish the digital taxi clearance testing at Moffett Field. The primary risk identified was the Boeing requirement to use Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) Very High Frequency (VHF) radio to transmit the digital taxi clearance message to the aircraft. Right now, that is not available at Moffett Field. The team has identified one option to get ACARS at the field and one alternate method using Satellite Communication to transmit the message. Those options are currently being confirmed.

DIP at the ATCA Technical Symposium AI Panel Discussions

April 23–24, 2024

The ATM-X Digital Information Platform (DIP) sub-project team members attended the Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) Technical Symposium in Atlantic City, NJ, on April 23 and 24. On 24th, Dr. Jeremy Coupe participated in the “Operationalizing Artificial Intelligence (AI)” panel discussion. This is a popular topic in the aviation community and the panel discussions were a good opportunity for the DIP team to highlight our expertise and contributions to developing and deploying the Machine Learning Airport Surface Model, which is the core predictive engine used by the SFNP Ops-1 Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting (CDDR) decision support tool. The panel covered topics including the mid-term and long-term AI/ML use cases in aviation, the challenges with deploying AI/ML applications in real-time production environments, the importance of robust Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) practices and pipelines, and how to build trust with end users when introducing AI/ML applications.

Software Development

On April 24th, Digital Information Platform (DIP) sub-project team deployed the Platform Release v.1.8 for DIP partners. This is a major release for the team to meet the Sustainable Flight National Partnership Operations 1b (SFNP-Ops 1b) Demonstration – related requirements.

DIP team rolled out service for SFNPOps 1b for the Houston area!

DIP Releases Software V1.8 

April 24, 2024

The following features were implemented as part of this release: 

Platform Update

• CDDR baseline capability for I90
  • The NAS TOS Web Table Service configuration is updated to allow N90 and I90 TMIs to be included in results provided to CDDR. As part of this functionality, known rules for I90 have been implemented, including TMI parsing and standardization.
• Scratchpad function on CDDR for International Flights
  • Scratchpad function is very valuable to ATC coordinators. The ATC Coordinators use the scratchpad to relay information to the tower, it saves phone calls. This functionality is now extended to international flights to perform TOS actions for international flights and scratchpad functionality is available for communication.
• Filter TOS options based on the airport configuration
  • TOS options are filtered based on the airport configuration, the landing direction deciphered for IAH CDR routes.
• 508 Compliance updates
  • DIP Portal UI pages are revamped to be Section 508 compliant. 508 compliance mandates that agencies provide people with disabilities access to information comparable to the access available to others unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency. For websites, Section 508 Compliance involves ensuring accessibility to people with limited vision or blindness, deafness, seizure disorders, and other disabilities.
• Enable Loki logging and Grafana monitoring 
  • Loki logging is introduced to monitor internal logs to trace end-to-end processes. This helps to debug and trace issues when there are multiple processes involved with one function. 

EVENTS

Upcoming: DIP Industry Day!

DIP Industry Day will be held at NASA Ames Research Center in the spring of 2025. This is an event for all industry and agency stakeholders to come together and discuss the opportunities for collaboration and partnerships and learn more about the following from DIP leadership and team.

SFNP-Ops 

Participants will gain insights into NASA’s SFNP-Ops demonstrations, which are a result of collaboration among NASA, the FAA, and flight operators. They will have the chance to learn about the current departure rerouting Ops demo and plan for future Ops demos toward gate-to-gate trajectory management under various airspace constraints.

DIP Platform and Services 

Participants will be acquainted with the latest features of the DIP platform and digital services currently available to partners and public users, such as Fuser in the NAS and the predictive engine utilizing machine learning (ML) services. They will also learn about NASA’s initiative to improve platform interoperability across different digital platforms and will be encouraged to share their expertise. Furthermore, new users will have the chance to learn how to access the platform to utilize existing services or register their own. 

Forum to Engage DIP Community 

NASA, the FAA, flight operators, service providers, and aviation research organizations will convene in one location to exchange their visions and strategies for enhancing the sustainability and efficiency of air transportation within the NAS. This forum presents an outstanding opportunity to introduce fresh concepts, foster new collaborative ventures, and cultivate synergy among participants. 

DIP Industry Day dates and registration details will be announced soon. 

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