NASA SBIR 00-1 SOLICITATION
FORM 9B - PROJECT SUMMARY
PROPOSAL NUMBER 00-1 07.01-9541 (Chron: 000460 )
PROJECT TITLE
Distributed Decision-Making Models for Advanced Air/Ground Traffic Management
TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
In the transition from current Air Traffic Management (ATM) practices to the envisioned Distributed Air-Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM) environment, inter-aircraft negotiation protocols will prove to be a key driver in shaping the balance between traffic safety, flow rates, and individual carrier operating objectives. We propose to develop an agent-based simulation that will serve as a tool to explore these issues, by upgrading our existing in-house ATM simulation to include one or more state-of-the-art human decision-making models best suited for the ATM environment. We first propose to survey several modeling approaches that have potential in the ATM context, and then evaluate these models across a number of decision-making criteria, including: social welfare, individual rationality, stability, computational efficiency, scalability, and convergence. We will then implement one or more of the most promising decision-making models within an existing agent-based architecture, evaluate the representational fidelity of these agent-based models, and assess their utility in predicting the impact of different protocols on overall air traffic operations. We will also assess usability from the standpoint of the system designer in formulating effective negotiation guidelines for future ATM practices.
POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS
The proposed technology will directly support simulation of the developed agents in the distributed air-ground traffic management system. These simulations will support the design and specification of rules for negotiation for pilots and Airline Operations Centers in the advanced ATM environment of the future. The underlying survey of distributed decision-making methods will also support requirements in other domains (e.g. intelligent vehicle highway systems, strategic warfare gaming industry, etc.) where it is desirable to consider multiple negotiation mechanisms. We also plan to extract the decision-making and communications components to embed in a generalized Intelligent Agent Toolkit (IAT) configurable to any domain requiring intelligent agent interaction.
NAME AND ADDRESS OF PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
(Name, Organization Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip)
Karen A. Harper
Charles River Analytics Inc.
725 Concord Ave
Cambridge , MA 02138 - 1040
NAME AND ADDRESS OF OFFEROR
(Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip)
Charles River Analytics Inc.
725 Concord Ave
Cambridge , MA 02138 - 1040