Rapid Development of a Multi-Aircraft Aviation System Simulation

In one concept proposed under the NASA Small Aircraft Transportation System program, pilots would self-separate by observing other aircraft near an airport using ADS-B and a moving-map display. An Airport Management Module (AMM) would sequence this traffic. The question was, however, whether the concept was practical and whether an automated Cockpit Associate (CA) could relieve pilot workload and improve performance. Sandia National Laboratories’ modeling and simulation framework, Umbra, licensed by ORION, was used to federate a number of instances of a commercial flight simulator, AMM, and CA into a multiaircraft simulation. Umbra facilitated the capture and logging of both key events and the flight technical error of all aircraft. Pilots reported that self-separation was easy to perform and that the CA provided the expected benefits. This simulation played a key role in the development of a public flight demonstration, which showed the value of Umbra in prototyping complex systems.