CROWN CONSULTING, INC. SBIR Phase I Award, July 2022

A mature advanced air mobility (AAM) system envisions hundreds of vertiports supporting high-density operations in complex environments. It is commonly recognized that vertiports will be the bottleneck of regional vertiport networks, thereby constraining the flow of traffic and impacting the financial bottom line. While it is also acknowledged that vertiports will require elevated levels of automation, the role in which the vertiport manager plays in teaming with automated resource scheduling systems has yet to be studied in detail. We propose to develop Vertiport Human Automation Teaming Toolbox (V-HATT), a simulation capability focused on vertiport airside operations with direct human vertiport manager oversight.In Phase I, we will develop vertiport manager user interface requirements, investigate vertiport surface and airspace design variables, evaluate vertiport surface resource scheduling algorithms, and develop a proof-of-concept simulation capability. In Phase II, we will build the vertiport manager user interface, develop terminal airspace separation and queuing algorithms, develop the integrated simulation capability, validate interfaces with human-in-the-loop for select use cases, and demonstrate contingencies in bottleneck analysis.