Concepts of Airspace Structures and System Analysis for UAS Traffic flows for Urban Areas Dae-Sung Jang * , KAIST and NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 Corey Ippolito † , NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 Shankar Sankararaman ‡ , SGT Inc. and NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 Vahram Stepanyan § , University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 This paper addresses a system centric approach for design and analysis of airspace use in urban unmanned aerial vehicle (UAS) traffic flow control. The approach is based on numerical traffic simulations with a behavioral model of UASs for estimating characteristics of the future UAS air traffic in urban areas and performances of airspace structures. A concept on urban UAS traffic flow control is proposed with various airspace structural designs of different levels of freedom in flight, and a microscopic traffic model of UASs in one of the designs is developed. Fundamental diagrams of simple UAS traffic are obtained and performances of basic airspace structures are compared by using the traffic simulations. I. Introduction The rapid technological advance for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in the last decade enables operations beyond line-of-sight and integration into existing airspaces with enhanced autonomy of the UASs. With the extended capability of UAS technologies, wide-range applicability of UAS is drawing attention to be feasible in the near future. 1–5 Especially, public and commercial needs of UAS operation in urban areas have been increasingly raised. 6–8 However, the environment of operations of UAS in urban areas is highly complex: UASs will operate at a low altitude above/below an uneven skyline in an area with high population density and vigorous ground activities. High-valued ground assets, static obstacles (e.g. wires, poles, buildings, trees), dynamic obstacles (e.g. human, ground vehicles, ships, birds, kites, piloted/manned aerial vehicles), unauthorized UASs, wind gust, and malicious activities (e.g. highjack, jamming, interception) are difficult factors for the UAS operation in dense urban valleys. Thus, as of now, the operation in a populated area is not practicable because of technically challenging aspects, such as robustness in wind gusts, safety assurance against dynamic urban features, and communication/navigation issues. In a broad view, there can be two approaches handling the technical challenges: vehicle-centric and UAS traffic management 9 (UTM) system-centric approaches. The vehicle-centric approach includes devel- oping on-board components, such as processors, power systems, and sensors, and enhancing the autonomy level of UASs (e.g. decision making, path/mission planning, etc.). On the other side, system-level analysis and development for UTM cover various open research problems: system designs, airspace designs, traffic control/management, navigation/surveillance infrastructures, and communication networks. Through the approaches, it is necessary to identify suitable levels of technologies and requirements of vehicles, sensors, and traffic control systems for the upcoming practical use of UASs in urban areas. * NASA Ames KAIST Postdoctoral Fellow, Intelligent Systems Division, e-mail: daeseong.jang@nasa.gov † Research Scientist, Intelligent Systems Division, e-mail: corey.a.ippolito@nasa.gov ‡ Research Engineer, Intelligent Systems Division, e-mail: shankar.sankararaman@nasa.gov § Senior Research Scientist, Intelligent Systems Division, NASA Ames Research Center, e-mail: vahram.stepanyan@nasa.gov 1 of 15 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Downloaded by NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER on February 15, 2017 | http://arc.aiaa.org | DOI: 10.2514/6.2017-0449 AIAA Information Systems-AIAA Infotech @ Aerospace 9 - 13 January 2017, Grapevine, Texas AIAA 2017-0449 This material is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. AIAA SciTech Forum