An Urban Air Mobility (UAM) company, Wisk, announced its new partnership with NASA to assist with safely integrating autonomous aircraft systems at a national level. Wisk joins NASA as part of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign strategy in order to assist with the preparation and development of guidance for UAM operations. Wisk aims to assist NASA in addressing some of the biggest challenges like certification and standards development. Without industry stakeholders as active participants in this process, it will halt this automated aviation technology from national expansion and implementation.

The first goal of this partnership is to address critical National Campaign safety scenarios. This will include autonomous flight and contingency management, collision avoidance and flight path management. Additionally, NASA and Wisk aim to evaluate architectures, perform simulation studies, and develop a validation framework that others can use for assessments of autonomous flight. In order to build a safe, effective, and efficient system, NASA and Wisk will work with industry standards organizations for guidance on airspace structure, flight procedures, minimum performance requirements, and other standards that may influence the future of autonomous systems. Be on the lookout for these guidelines and standards.