Abstract
As the technological and operational capabilities of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) continue to grow, so too does the need to introduce these systems into civil airspace. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System is a NASA research project that addresses the integration of civil UAS into non-segregated airspace operations. One of the major challenges of this integration is the lack of an on-board pilot to comply with the legal requirement that pilots see and avoid other aircraft. The need to provide an equivalent to this requirement for UAS has motivated the development of a detect and avoid (DAA) capability to provide the appropriate situational awareness and maneuver guidance in avoiding and remaining well clear of traffic aircraft. Formal methods has played a fundamental role in the development of this capability. This talk reports on the formal methods work conducted under NASA’s Safe Autonomous System Operations project in support of the development of DAA for UAS. This work includes specification of low-level and high-level functional requirements, formal verification of algorithms, and rigorous validation of software implementations. The talk also discusses technical challenges in formal methods research in the context of the development and safety analysis of advanced air traffic management concepts.
This invited lecture reports on research conducted at NASA Langley Research Center at the Safety-Critical Avionics Systems Branch by several individuals including, in addition to the author, Anthony Narkawicz, George Hagen, Jason Upchurch, and Aaron Dutle.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Consiglio, M., Chamberlain, J., Muñoz, C., Hoffler, K.: Concept of integration for UAS operations in the NAS. In: Proceedings of 28th International Congress of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2012, Brisbane, Australia (2012)
Denman, W., Muñoz, C.: Automated real proving in PVS via MetiTarski. In: Jones, C., Pihlajasaari, P., Sun, J. (eds.) FM 2014. LNCS, vol. 8442, pp. 194–199. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)
Dutle, A.M., Muñoz, C.A., Narkawicz, A.J., Butler, R.W.: Software validation via model animation. In: Blanchette, J.C., Kosmatov, N. (eds.) TAP 2015. LNCS, vol. 9154, pp. 92–108. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)
FAA Sponsored Sense and Avoid Workshop. Sense and avoid (SAA) for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), October 2009
Goodloe, A.E., Muñoz, C., Kirchner, F., Correnson, L.: Verification of numerical programs: from real numbers to floating point numbers. In: Brat, G., Rungta, N., Venet, A. (eds.) NFM 2013. LNCS, vol. 7871, pp. 441–446. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Jenkins, D., Vasigh, B.: The economic impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems integration in the United States. Economic report of the Association For Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), March 2013
Mariano Moscato, César Muñoz, and Andrew Smith. Affine arithmetic and applications to real-number proving. In: Urban, C., Zhang, X. (ed.), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2015), vol. 9236 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Nanjing, China, Springer, Heidelberg, August 2015
Muñoz, C.: Rapid prototyping in PVS. Contractor Report NASA/CR-2003-212418, NASA, Langley Research Center, Hampton VA 23681–2199, USA, May 2003
Muñoz, C., Narkawicz, A.: Formalization of a representation of Bernstein polynomials and applications to global optimization. J. Autom. Reason. 51(2), 151–196 (2013)
Muñoz, C., Narkawicz, A., Chamberlain, J.: A TCAS-II resolution advisory detection algorithm. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit 2013, number AIAA-2013-4622, Boston, Massachusetts, August 2013
Muñoz, C., Narkawicz, A., Chamberlain, J., Consiglio, M., Upchurch, J.: A family of well-clear boundary models for the integration of UAS in the NAS. In: Proceedings of the 14th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference, number AIAA-2014-2412, Georgia, Atlanta, USA, June 2014
Muñoz, C., Narkawicz, A., Consiglio, G.: DAIDALUS: detect and avoid alerting logic for unmanned systems. In: Proceedings of the 34th Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC 2015), Prague, Czech Republic, September 2015
Narkawicz, A., Muñoz, C.: A formally verified generic branching algorithm for global optimization. In: Cohen, E., Rybalchenko, A. (eds.) VSTTE 2013. LNCS, vol. 8164, pp. 326–343. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)
Narkawicz, A., Muñoz, C., Dutle, A.: Formally-verified decision procedures for univariate polynomial computation based on Sturm’s and Tarski’s theorems. J. Autom. Reason. 54(4), 285–326 (2015)
Owre, S., Rushby, J., Shankar, N.: PVS: A prototype verification system. In: Kapur, D. (ed.) Automated Deduction–CADE-11. LNAI, vol. 607, pp. 748–752. Springer, Heidelberg (1992)
RTCA SC-147. RTCA-DO-185B, Minimum operational performance standards for traffic alert and collision avoidance system II (TCAS II), July 2009
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Muñoz, C.A. (2015). Formal Methods in Air Traffic Management: The Case of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Invited Lecture). In: Leucker, M., Rueda, C., Valencia, F. (eds) Theoretical Aspects of Computing - ICTAC 2015. ICTAC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9399. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25150-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25150-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25149-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25150-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)