Virtual Sky: Morphable Geo-Spatial Computing for the Internet of Planes

Project Summary (NSF Award 1816307)

In the near future, a majority of aircraft will be equipped with sophisticated technology to sense flight conditions and to directly communicate with nearby aircraft. By sharing information, each plane can provide mission critical information to its pilot beyond what can be perceived by a single aircraft. An example is warning of dangerous weather conditions just outside of an aircraft’s sensing range. This project will create a Virtual Sky platform that enables the network of planes, called the Internet of Planes (IoP), to fuse and analyze sensed data correctly, reliably, and quickly, to support safer and more efficient air travel.

The project is divided into two thrusts. The first is to create distributed algorithms for planes to learn a consistent, accurate estimate of flight conditions. Contributions will include analysis of the correctness and performance of the algorithms and a study of their theoretical limits in global-scale dynamic networks like the IoP. The second research thrust is the development and evaluation of a large-scale prototype of the Virtual Sky that uses real-time aircraft and weather data. The prototype also integrates a flight simulator, which will be used to study the benefits of the application with a human pilot in the loop.

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Publications related to this project

  • Shelton S., H. Newberg, J. Weiss, J. Bauer, M. Arsenault, L. Widrow, C. Rayment, R. Judd, T. Desell, M. Magdon-Ismail, M. Newby, C. Rice, B. Szymanski, J. Thompson, C. Varela, B. Willett, S. Ulin,and L. Newberg, "An Algorithm for Reconstructing the Orphan Stream Progenitor with MilkyWay@home Volunteer Computing", The Astrophysical Journal, 26pp., accepted May 2019 (to appear).
  • Paul S. and C. A. Varela, "Data-Driven Wind-Aware Emergency Trajectory Planning for Fixed-Wing Aircraft", AIAA Journal of Aircraft, submitted Nov 2018.
  • Breese S., F. Kopsaftopoulos, and C. A. Varela, "Towards Proving Runtime Properties of Data-Driven Systems Using Safety Envelopes", Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems session at the 12th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM 2019), 11pp., Stanford, CA, Sep. 2019.
  • Castellanos C., B. Perez, C. A. Varela, M. Villamil and D. Correal, "A Survey on Big Data Analytics Solutions Deployment", 13th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA), 8pp., Paris France, Sep. 2019.
  • Castellanos C., D. Correal, and C. A. Varela, "Measuring Performance Quality Scenarios in Big Data Analytics Applications: A DevOps and Domain-Specific Model Approach", 2nd International Workshop on Software Architecture Challenges in Big Data (SACBD) at 13th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA), Paris France, Sep. 2019.
  • Paul S., S. Patterson, and C. A. Varela, "Conflict-Aware Flight Planning for Avoiding Near Mid-Air Collisions”, 38th AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC 2019)", 38th AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC 2019), 10pp., San Diego, CA, Sep. 2019.
  • Imai S., F. Hole, and C. A. Varela, "Self-Healing Data Streams Using Multiple Models of Analytical Redundancy", 38th AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC 2019), 10pp., San Diego, CA, Sep. 2019.
  • Blasch E., J. D. Ashdown, C. A. Varela, F. Kopsaftopoulos, and R. H. Newkirk, "Dynamic Data Driven Analytics for Multi-domain Environments", Next-Generation Sensor Systems and Applications Track at 2019 SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing Conference, 10pp., Baltimore, MD, April, 2019.
  • Imai S., C. A. Varela, and S. Patterson, "A Performance Study of Geo-Distributed IoT Data Aggregation for Fog Computing", ”, First International Workshop on managed Fog-to-Cloud (mF2C 2018), 11th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2018), 6pp., Zurich, Switzerland, December 2018.
  • C. Varela, Too Many Airplane Systems Rely on Too Few Sensors, TheConversation.com, April 8, 2019.
  • Castiglia, T. and Patterson, S., "Distributed Submodular Maximization with Bounded Communication Cost", 2019 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 6pp., Nice, France, Dec 2019 (to appear).