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NASA researchers using augmented reality technology to check uncrewed vehicle air traffic management software during NASA’s fourth and final Technical Capability Level demonstration of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management project.
Credits: NASA/Ames Research Center
If you’re an avid smartphone user, you’ve probably encountered augmented reality before. Whether it’s a filter to present yourself cat ears and whiskers, or collecting creatures that appear in the actual world through a videogame, these technologies that create digital overlays on top of the physical world are increasingly becoming an element of our lives.
NASA is using the identical technologies to make useful details about every kind of vehicles in our skies, like drones, more widely available to those that need it. Whether for emergency response, managing air traffic, or local governance, visualizing complex data through augmented reality makes it easier for people on the bottom to concentrate on the operations of the uncrewed vehicles that can increasingly populate our skies.
“When you see vehicles like drones a number of hundred feet above your head, you’re lots more inquisitive about what’s occurring than with a plane that’s several hundreds of feet within the sky,” said Joey Mercer, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “We desired to make a number of the invisible information concerning the automated traffic systems managing these vehicles, and the vehicles themselves, more easily accessible from the bottom.”
The software to make this occur was developed on the Airspace Operations Laboratory at Ames. It creates a digital overlay with details about flight patterns, a vehicle’s mission, and more – essential information as such vehicles turn out to be integrated into our daily lives. Airspace operators, local public officials, emergency responders and more could have needs for awareness of what’s happening of their local airspace. As more unconventional aircraft integrate into these environments, it’s necessary for them to achieve this safely and with appropriate communications to local communities. The software leverages the capabilities of a commonly available mixed-reality headset, Microsoft HoloLens, to visualise this data in the actual world. By naturally swiping and choosing items through hand gestures and eye-tracking technology, NASA helps air traffic management occur in a way more interactive way than it has previously.
The headsets are very useful for certain scenarios, but to make information much more accessible, this augmented reality software will also be used on smartphone devices. In the long run, once you see someone with their phone out and pointed towards the sky while walking down the road, they might be data related to a drone flying overhead as a substitute of taking a selfie.
Augmented reality contributes to NASA’s future in Advanced Air Mobility, or AAM, which goals to develop air transportation systems that move people and cargo between places previous not served or underserved by aviation. New technologies help address the unique challenges that include drones and other uncrewed vehicles, where vehicles don’t necessarily have a set flight path or trajectory like larger aircraft, and are also more visible to the ground-based public. For smaller uncrewed aircraft in urban environments, augmented reality allows researchers on the bottom to assist test air traffic management systems by overlaying real-world environments with interactive data visualizations, including other simulated aircraft.
This technology underwent a field evaluation during NASA’s fourth and final Technical Capability Level demonstration, or TCL4, of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management, or UTM, project. Researchers used HoloLens devices to run the prototype augmented reality software to trace the drones participating within the demonstration in real-time, visualizing data gathered and spatial relationships between multiple flight paths and objects in the actual world. The software will also be used to visualise simulated drones in the identical airspace.
“Uncrewed aircraft are increasingly more becoming an element of our lives,” said Mercer. “As we take a look at how one can safely integrate these vehicles into already complex city infrastructures and airspaces, augmented reality is an ideal tool, with numerous potential for the way we expect of managing our skies in the long run.”
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Author: Frank Tavares, NASA’s Ames Research Center
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