UAS Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) Strategy: An Approach for Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) Standards Development and System Validation

This document presents a candidate architecture for employing Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) techniques in support of the NASA Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) project and related efforts within the domain of the integration of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operational use cases into the National Air System (NAS). By linking live test assets with human-in-the-loop system surrogates (virtual) and fully synthetic (constructive) components, LVC allows for the creation of a blended-fidelity ecosystem – achieving high realism where needed to meet test objectives while simultaneously reducing cost, complexity, and risk. LVC is a fundamental aspect of live-testing complex airspace operations because it provides continuous safety assurance in theoretically high-risk operational scenarios, reduces the demand for valuable resources required for live testing activities, and maximizes the ratio of the value of test results to cost expenditures. This plan proposes a configurable, modular approach, employing standardized interfaces to enhance existing NASA testing capabilities to improve test organizer's ability to select the level of fidelity appropriate for key individual system components for their particular objectives. The document begins by selecting the specific target use cases of focus for discussion, largely aligning to the addressing the key challenges described in the PAAV Concept Document that are most aligned to the benefits of LVC techniques. A common linguistic and conceptual framework for adapting LVC concepts to the context of the identified use cases is provided. This framework, along with a discussion of current capabilities, especially those currently part of NASA’s existing LVC capabilities, and those of the “HollSafe” test ecosystem, are used to inform the design for an expanded LVC-enabled ecosystem, along with a proposed evolutionary path to realize the design. This discussion is facilitated via a use-case by use-case level breakdown, where within the context of each identified use-case, desired research objectives are mapped to the specific LVC techniques that could be employed to provide the appropriate level of fidelity to most efficiently and safely achieve meaningful results. The proposed evolutionary pathway takes the form of a phased approach and is informed by an attempt to find efficient incrementations that make maximum use of existing capabilities, prioritize groupings of new capabilities that unlock the greatest amount of research value at each step for the level of required investment. Additionally, this timeline attempts to align with the externally driven need-dates of the identified use cases under test (e.g. standards, regulatory, and industry readiness that drives the need for the identified research use case).