Multi-Agent Simulation to Envision Communication Strategies in Future Air Mobility Operations

In the future, low-altitude, shorter-range air operations will require support for interdependent parties, including pilots, fleet operators, and providers of traffic services, to safely and efficiently coordinate and manage shared airspace. Timely and quality communication is key to maintaining common ground between different roles, especially when dynamically cascading events require high-tempo responses. To ensure that communication is adequately supported in the design of procedures and aids, further development of the operational concepts for lower-altitude operations should account for the time and effort required for communication and consider strategies for distributing this overhead among the system's actors. This study draws from research on team cognition and communication to develop a multi-agent model of the work involved in communication. The model aims to quantify the overhead associated with communication and to dynamically evaluate alternate communication strategies in envisioned air operations. An operational scenario on contingency management in low-altitude air operations involving electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft is presented to demonstrate how the framework can support the analysis of a range of alternate strategies. The proposed approach can serve as a formative tool for designing artifacts for supporting distributed work.