Preliminary Design of Wind-Aware sUAS Simulation Pipeline for Urban Air Mobility

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-3872.vid We introduce and propose a wind-aware small unmanned aircraft system human-in-the loop simulation pipeline for operations in low-altitude urban airspace. To complement the Urban Air Mobility concept that envisions safe, sustainable, and accessible air transportation, we design an aggregated simulation pipeline so that Human Machine Interaction during operations in turbulent windy conditions can be studied. In this work, we primarily identify the lack of wind-awareness in the current user interface designs available for small unmanned aircraft system. After a small research group study, we recognize the information components that are crucial in the operational context and integrate specific display information in an extended wind-aware user interface which includes real time wind velocity display and trajectory management features. Additionally, we extend the capability of an existing simulator to simulate spatial-temporal wind data in real time. The simulation pipeline provides a comprehensive structure for wind-aware sUAS simulations which can be used for mission design experiments in the presence of wind and evaluation of pilot response to increased wind situational awareness.