Functional Decomposition for Execution of UAM Mission

Several recent key technological advancements have opened the door to new aviation markets and airspace concepts. The success of these new airspace concepts depends on safe and effective use of the new technologies, including the increasing use of automated/autonomous systems. This paper describes the ongoing progress to develop a framework to define, organize and characterize the functions needed to enable the new concepts. The framework must allow the required functions to be described independently of whether the execution of the functions is performed by humans or automated/autonomous systems, flexible enough to allow continued iteration as knowledge is gained, and broad enough to be useful across different aviation domain applications. The framework is intended to help identify barriers to the safe use of automated/autonomous systems in future aviation markets, corresponding research gaps, and data requirements for safety assessment.