HorizonUAM: Safety and Security Considerations for Urban Air Mobility

Abstract

HorizonUAM is a DLR project to research the vision of urban air mobility. One important topic is the safety and security aspect. This paper discusses the safety and security considerations in the topic areas of: safe autonomy, reliable multisensor navigation, robust and efficient communication, U-space and safe air traffic, and finally cyber-physical safety and security. As a basis for future discussion, the challenges and gaps are identified, furthermore the research in the context of the project is briefly outlined. From a safety perspective, the missing pilot of an autonomous vehicle is equivalent to a missing fallback layer, which has to be mitigated. Additionally, trust needs to be established for new techniques, specifically machine learning, which has recently gained massive interest. To solve this, verification, standardization, and regulation aspects of autonomy have to be addressed. The research is therefore targeted towards assessing and increasing the safety of autonomous operations. Moreover, a multi-sensor navigation system is necessary to achieve required safety levels in challenging environments, while meeting the cost and weight constraints. In order to ensure the integrity of the navigation system, an innovative integrity monitoring architecture for the multi-sensor solution will be investigated in the UAM context. Furthermore, many flying vehicles will need to share information in a reliable and trustworthy manner. Therefore, a robust and efficient communication system is specifically designed to meet the requirements of the future urban air mobility in order to mitigate midair collisions. To achieve safe air traffic, U-space services would have to be established. The project will specifically address gaps in the proposed services and identify additional required information and services. As a last aspect, the cyber physical safety and security has to be considered. With highly connected systems, attacks can happen over the Internet from virtually anywhere. Therefore, it is required to establish a holistic approach for cyber-physical safety and security.