Supporting the Next Generation of Autonomy with Policy and Governance

August 18, 2021 | Jim Romeo

XPONENTIAL 2021’s second day move forward with a sprite momentum focused on policy and governance, and their crucial role in advancing the future of autonomous systems.

Michelle Duquette, portfolio manager and outcome leader for UAS operations at The MITRE Corporation opened the first panel discussion by connecting the topic of policy and governance with the previous day’s technology discussion. She brought attention to her observations of technology discussions by stating a recurrent theme: “Innovation is outpacing regulation.”

But to that, she added another observation: “What if policy required to enable such innovation doesn’t quite exist? And what existing policy is available today?”

These questions and other thoughts set the stage for an inclusive discussion of leaders from local government; advisors to federal, state, and local government; and private sector firms – all whom are engaged in policy, governance, infrastructure, and integration – important ingredients that support the advancement of technology for autonomous systems. 

The Infrastructure Conundrum

Selika Talbot, principal at Autonomous Vehicle Consulting addressed some of these ingredients. She turned the larger landscape in which autonomous technology is to operate and why the landscape plays such a key role.

“As we build mobility, we can do our best to increase mobility for all,” Talbot told the audience. “Technology has to be accessible.” Such technology and the policy that governs it, she says, must meet the needs of the populace at large. “The government has to supply supportive policy.” Infrastructure and supporting policy and governance supports it all. It helps uphold the mobility and the freedom of autonomous vehicles, technologies, and systems.

“There’s a business case to move goods and people in the most efficient manner possible,” Talbot says. “If government opens the use of autonomous vehicle use throughout the entire United States through federal policy and government investment, it will allow a great autonomous industry to grow exponentially. It would provide growth for state and local government for the movement of their citizenry to their goods. It would pump up economies and there would be a ripple effect of growth throughout our nation.”

Infrastructure design is based on regulation, scalability, compliance, and advocacy. To best understand the how, what, and why of infrastructure in this context, Talbot and a diverse panel of experts discussed infrastructure challenges that lie ahead.

“I think some of the top challenges that exist today are a little bit different than what they were three to five years ago,” says Dr. Michael Guterres, senior principal for The MITRE Corporation. “Alot of the technologies have matured quite a bit. Alot of the technologies that were developed three to five years ago are now quite mature.”

Guterres says most of the big challenges ahead of us are scaling challenges. How can technologies that were successful in experimentation, in a smaller ecosystem, then scale nationally? For that, Guterres says, some sort of consortium or partnership would be beneficial. He says things like local zoning can help and that investment and funding sources are always a concern and must be secured to make progress.

When it comes to making roadways ready for autonomous vehicles, Suzanne Murtha, vice president of connected and automated technologies for AECOM described her firm’s efforts to create tools that help cities assess roadways and cities in their readiness to provide in-ground charging stations. She described a digital tool that provides a readiness indicator which reads out several variables and parameters for things, in addition to charging infrastructure, like machine vision of a vehicle on a particular roadway, as well as energy consumption forecasts for a particular route.

Brian Johnson, city manager for the City of Peachtree Corners, nearby metro downtown Atlanta, also participated in the panel. From his vantage point, local governments have limited expertise and their resources are limited in what they can provide to larger scale autonomous efforts. “If we can get that public space created in a way that is very inviting to the private sector, the private sector will come.” 

Integration with Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM)

A latter panel took the role of locality a bit further by describing their work in Nevada, where they simulated numerous simultaneous flights of drones, then increasing the scale of the number of flights and learn from the series of exercises conducted within the project.

Switch, ANRA Technologies, and the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS) collaborated in the FAA BAA 1 UTM research project. Their simulation created an isolated UTM system they deployed in a hybrid cloud to identify system requirements for scalability.

They began with just a few unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and then increased the number. And they did this remotely. Control was in Las Vegas, but the UAS were some 450 miles away in Reno, Nevada.

Brent Klavon, VP operations for ANRA Technologies describes the series of demonstrations in which they tried to stress their systems within a space to see what the implications and demands would be.

They had four demonstrations, the first being one where they wanted to take a system in a simulated environment of 250 simultaneous drones on one platform and advance that to 10,000 drones. “In between these two demonstrations, we wanted to evaluate our metrics and obtain lessons learn and see where we need to dial up or down,” says Klavon.

In a subsequent demonstration they started with 250 simultaneous drones and brought the simulations up to a number where they felt they could break the system at 50,000 drones. They then analyzed the approach. The project was quite successful. Participant crews saw no latency in getting things like latency back and forth as well as video back and forth, throughout the demonstrations. Everyone learned something.

Resiliency was a takeaway watchword from the panel discussion. Having resilient systems and supportive control to remotely manage the traffic in the Nevada project was key and instrumental in supporting the crews. For successful UTM, resiliency of systems and other tools allows the crews to manage their flights without anxiety and fear of catastrophe. 

Integrating Collaboration Between Federal, State, and Local Levels

While traffic management remains a challenge when planning infrastructure for the next generation of unmanned vehicle deployment and utility, the iteration between federal, state, and local governance also poses challenge. In another panel discussion the discourse entailed other issues arising as the interests of constituents, elected officials, and other workers in an around all levels of government differ. The need for clear and productive communication about future policy for unmanned vehicles, seems to be a prevailing theme.

Jeff Brandes is a Senator with the State of Florida (who says he gained much of his inspiration about forward technology from watching TED talks). He is bullish on the future of UAS. Brandes says the key for any government is to ask: “What’s your vision?” Then ask: “Who’s your champion?”

Brandes urged AUSVI to attract legislators to come to events such as XPONENTIAL 2021. Such collaboration and networking can help forge policy that all could benefit from. He feels it would help and prompt states to step up, form a vision, and then identify a champion to drive that vision.

Patrick Bresnahan is the GIO of Richland County, South Carolina. He points out the differences in city governments and state governments and says the communication is not direct enough. He sees a strong need for better communication and collaboration between industry and government leaders and workers at all levels. Communication and collaboration were used over and over during the discussion as the issue of policy and governance is explored for the future of autonomy.

The day covered many different facets of policy and governance. It unveiled many current issues, and revisited old ones, provoking thought for the entire industry and stakeholders as they seek to best generate policy, develop infrastructure, and integrate many crucial components to the success of unmanned vehicle systems.