Airbus UTM has released more information about its development of a proprietary simulation environment called USim and how it provides “a digital twin of each element in the UTM ecosystem to allow UTM stakeholders to test individual services and verify interoperability between existing ones – all without the real-world consequences of system failures.”
The company says “At its core, USim simulates vehicles and operators, allowing researchers to explore fundamental aspects of flight operations like flight planning and impacts of navigation error and other noise on vehicle performance. However, USim also includes a set of prototype UTM services, enabling researchers to simulate more operationally relevant scenarios, applying concepts such as strategic deconfliction and measuring implications in terms of outcomes like safety, efficiency and fairness.”
According to the news posting:
“The UTM framework for tomorrow’s airspace is evolving with guidance from NASA, the FAA, EASA, EUROCONTROL and more than 100 other stakeholders. As a federated system, it relies on the distributed management of airspace. Rather than operating under a centralized management and control authority, UTM is instead served by a network of entities and service providers that manage traffic based on negotiation, the sharing of data, common regulations and authoritative data. The presence of these varied entities, each with its own priorities, adds an additional layer of complexity to understanding tomorrow’s UTM challenges.
“Advances in cloud computing now allow simulation to be offered in a new way to touch a wider spectrum of the aerospace industry. Rather than utilizing simulation to simply develop and package services that would become obsolete in the face of evolving UAS technologies, researchers can instead use it as a collaborative tool. Employing digital twin technology using a software as a service (SaaS) approach enables future stakeholders to benefit from an agile simulated environment. With SaaS access, stakeholders can be part of the development of a sustainable UTM framework and make informed decisions about the impact of regulatory requirements and developing UTM services.
“USim is already being utilized to validate and develop NASA concepts of operation for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations in the United States. Airbus UTM has also employed USim in collaboration with EUROCONTROL to study the safety and performance of future U-Space operations in Europe and further applied it in the context of the European ATM R&D program (SESAR).”
Simulation will not replace flight tests says Airbus UTM, but the data it can generate will provide a detailed picture of future airspace, making flight tests safer and more efficient.
For more information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKG4seNCh5I
(Image: Airbus UTM)
