Information Fusion as an Autonomy enabler for UAV Traffic Management
Ali K. Raz, Roberto Sabatini · AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum · 2021
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-0658.vid Autonomy proliferates air and space traffic management with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) initiative on Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM). New endeavors such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) and COVID19 are challenging every aspect of the NextGEN rollout. Hence, to develop a safe and secure UTM, there is need for knowledge management. Knowledge management comes from awareness about the environment and awareness is based on assessment. The information fusion community has long developed methods for data fusion (e.g., statistical analysis), sensor fusion (e.g., navigation and tracking), information fusion (e.g., Notice to Airman and air tracks), as well intelligence fusion (e.g., response to malicious attacks) for knowledge assessment. Each of these techniques has opportunities to enable UTM autonomy, joint all-domain command and control, and surveillance. This paper explores the various uses of fusion available to support the autonomy. For example, three types of autonomy have been proposed: autonomy at rest (e.g., flight plans, radar positions), autonomy in motion (e.g., dynamic tracking with automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) and weather), as well as autonomy in use (e.g., getting the right data at the correct time). A use case is presented for UTM that utilizes data fusion from ADS-B, radar, LiDAR, and visual data to provide effective positioning in response to various cyber attacks on the ADS-B data.