One of the most important goals of companies in the field of artificial intelligence is the development of “agent-based” or autonomous systems. These metaphorical agents can perform tasks without a guiding human hand. This is in line with the goals of the emerging urban air mobility industry, which hopes to bring autonomous aircraft to cities around the world. One company got the upper hand in both cases, thanks to some help from NASA.
Autonomy Association International Inc. (AAI) is a public benefit corporation based in Mountain View, California, near NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. In 2022, AAI signed a Space Law Compact with Ames to support the agency's Data and Reasoning Fabric project, which aimed to support the transport of people and cargo to areas previously unserved or underserved by aviation, and to provide reliable, accurate and timely data for aviation decision-making.
“The inspiration to use data structure to solve specific complexities came from our partnership with NASA,” said AAI co-founder and industry principal investigator Greg Deeds. “Working on this project was a great experience for us. Working with NASA engineers and executives gave us experience that we will use in all of our products.”
Just as the fabric of clothing is made up of interwoven threads, a data factory is made up of interwoven data sources. While a data fabric created by a technology company might include data from several different cloud service providers, NASA's Data and Reasoning Fabric can also use information provided by local governments and other service providers. By treating airspace as a large data structure, an autonomous vehicle can receive data and requests from the cities it flies over and prioritize responses between them.
Working with Ken Freeman, the project's principal investigator at Ames, AAI and NASA conducted four test adaptations of the data factory technology in the air over Arizona. Using hardware and software developed by AAI, the flights tested advanced passenger air mobility flights and the use of a drone to quickly transport medical supplies from urban to rural areas and back, as well as sending new missions to an aircraft in flight. The helicopter has replaced drones and air taxis, flying over cities, universities, tribal lands and the airspace around Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport and receiving data and programs transmitted to it from various locations.
“We are focused on the building blocks of the digital infrastructure of smart cities and regions of the future,” said Jennifer Deeds, chief operating officer and co-founder of AAI.
In the years since NASA's original project, the company has built relationships and clients overseas, including companies in agriculture, real estate development and industrial food production, using its system to aggregate and manage data. The company's digital infrastructure platform, released in 2024, uses the same technology that was originally developed for NASA flight testing. A new, “agent-based” version soon followed, capable of retrieving the necessary AI programs with minimal interaction.
As artificial intelligence opens opportunities for innovation in American industries, NASA is providing its commercial partners with the keys by using proven technologies to create breakthrough solutions.
Find out more: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/
