Aptima Wins NASA Contract for Human-Autonomy UAV Research

The future of flight may be unmanned, but not unmanaged. With growing numbers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) proliferating in the aviation domain, key questions have emerged around the ratio of human operators that can safely control the growing numbers and fleets of UAVs.

To address those questions, Aptima, which applies expertise in human-autonomy teaming, announced a contract award by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia to assist in the research and development of a framework for defining the human-to-UAV ratio for safer and more effective UAV operations.

While manned flight is governed by a 1:1 ratio of single pilot or crew operating a single aircraft, UAV operations are evolving to a radically different model, where a human controller may be tasked to coordinate from just a few to tens of UAVs and conceivably more in the future.

The aviation community currently does not have a rigorous, systematic method for defining what is referred to as the "m:N ratio", where the fewest number of human operators — ‘m’ — can optimally oversee a multitude of UAVs — ‘N’.

Under this contract, Aptima is collaborating with the m:N Working Group led by NASA’s Transformational Tools and Technologies project. Comprised of experts from industry, academia and government, the group will clarify the m:N problem space, filling in knowledge gaps to develop an architecture of these UAV human-autonomous teams that will be used to inform government and industry.

“The m:N ratio problem is about minimizing the number of humans that can safely, reliably, and effectively oversee growing numbers of UAVs without undue cognitive overload or stress, “said Dr. Samantha Emerson, scientist in Aptima’s Performance Augmentation Systems Division, and Principal Investigator for the contract. 

“The ratio itself, however, is function of other factors and how they interact.”

Those factors include the design and missions of the UAV, the tasks that the human is in control of, the frequency with which the human needs to intervene in autonomous operations, and more, added Emerson.

Despite their deemed ‘autonomy,’ UAVs still require a human to oversee and monitor the equipment, sensors, and airspace environment. In the event of an issue or emergency, for example, a controller would need to direct the UAV to take an appropriate action such as landing as soon as possible or returning to a nearby base. "Even in a world of autonomous machines, the human element remains crucial,” said Emerson.

When the resulting m:N framework is published by NASA, it is expected to provide guidance to commercial, government, and military organizations.

“Companies need a way to show regulators that they’ve accounted for and evaluated all these factors in a systematic way and that their planned operations are at least as safe as if not safer than a 1:1 ratio,” said Emerson. 

“The goal of this joint work is to lay out the factors that need to be considered when determining what that safe ratio of humans to UAVs is.”

The UAV market is poised for explosive growth, with a burgeoning number of commercial, government, and defense applications, from large-scale air transportation in Urban Air Mobility, to delivery of medicines and supplies, to global military operations.

In addition to its human factors and cognitive science expertise, Aptima is bringing prior experience in aviation and human-autonomy teaming to the m:N project. In recent work for the US Air Force and its AFWERX Agility Prime program, the company evaluated the pilot proficiencies needed to operate eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft with varying levels of automation.

“In fact, we’re incorporating human-autonomy teaming on this project as well,” added Emerson. 

“We’re augmenting our team with a customized large language model (LLM) agent that will speed up and help synthesize the extensive research and literature review we’re conducting on behalf of the Working Group as we develop the framework.”