2020 Sponsors

NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP) works with the Federal Aviation Administration, industry and academic partners to conceive and develop Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) technologies to further improve the safety of current and future aircraft. As radar-based air traffic control transitions to a NextGen satellite-based system to enhance safety, capacity and efficiency on runways and in flight, AOSP-developed NextGen methods and means will provide advanced automated support to air navigation service providers and aircraft operators to reduce air-travel times and delays, and to ensure greater safety in all weather conditions.

AOSP Projects develop and demonstrate airspace domain capabilities as foundational components of NextGen; open up the airspace to emergent users, vehicles, and missions by developing  and demonstrating  new service-based paradigm leveraging  UTM principles; discover the impact on safety of growing complexity introduced by modernization  and develop  innovative solutions that mitigating these risks in accordance with target levels of safety; and, develop and validate airspace integration performance requirements to enable access to UAS in low-altitude airspace.

NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System, or UAS in the NAS Project has worked on identifying, developing and testing the technologies and procedures that will make it possible for UAS to have routine access to airspace occupied by human-piloted aircraft.  The UAS in the NAS project used modeling, simulations and flight tests to develop and test technologies that provide safe, effective, secure capabilities including detect and avoid (DAA) and command and control (C2).  

The Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) project focuses on enabling emerging aviation markets that will provide substantial benefit to the U.S. public and industry.  Starting with Urban Air Mobility (UAM), the AAM project will enable these markets by being a community catalyst and developing and validating system-level concepts and solutions both within AAM and in coordination with other ARMD projects that have a role related to enabling UAM.  Four NASA centers support the AAM project: NASA’s Ames Research Center and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Ohio, and Langley Research Center in Virginia.  The AAM project is within the Integrated Aviation Systems Research Program, managed by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through public-private partnerships, as well as the operation of federally funded R&D centers, we work across government to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation.

MITRE operates the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, which has supported the FAA for more than 60 years. In addition, MITRE provides technical expertise to various international civil aviation authorities, airport operators, airlines, and other aviation organizations in air traffic management systems engineering, aviation operations, airspace design, and systems automation and integration. Learn more at www.mitre.org

We believe aircraft should fly themselves.

Founded in 2017 by the leaders who developed the first commercial reusable rockets, the first commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station, and the first commercial automobile with Level 2 self-driving capability, Reliable Robotics is designing and building advanced automation systems for commercial aircraft.

Starting with a certification-forward approach, Reliable Robotics first demonstrated gate to gate fully automated operation of a Part 23 aircraft and is now working towards commercialization of technologies for Part 23 cargo and Part 25 passenger vehicles.

Advanced automation will make aircraft safer, more available, more affordable and fundamentally transformative to the way goods and people move around the planet.

To learn more, visit www.reliable.co

PRESAGIS is a technology innovator and a leading provider of software development tools for HMI simulation and deployment. We offer intuitive and robust software tools to develop safe and certifiable cockpit graphics for the aerospace, defense, security, and critical infrastructure markets.

Since 1985, PRESAGIS has been supplying first in class cockpit display systems software tools for graphics development, and both ARINC 661 and DO-178 certifiable solutions for 15 years. The company pioneered the prototyping of avionic display graphics and the automatic code generation for embedded systems in the 1990s. Since then, code generated by its flagship HMI modeling and embedded graphics products have been deployed to hundreds of aircraft worldwide and its embedded graphics software has been certified on over 30 major aircraft programs worldwide.

PRESAGIS’ HMI development toolkit provides its customers the tools and services necessary to bring new products to market fast, and with reduced risk. Its latest generation of software tools combine the reliability customers need for mission- and safety-critical graphics development with leading-edge technology developed for modern cockpit graphics. In today’s world, modern cockpit designers and engineers are increasingly adopting the ARINC 661 architecture, and are starting to deploy touch and gesture as the preferred means of human-machine interaction. PRESAGIS technology, developed in conjunction with major aircraft OEMs, provides leading-edge capabilities to enable the development of such products.

PRESAGIS serves hundreds of aviation, space and defense customers worldwide, including many of the world's most respected organizations such as Boeing, Airbus, Airbus Helicopters, Collins Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Thales, General Dynamics, and CAE among others. Visit www.presagis.com/EmbeddedGraphics for more information.

Southwest Research Institute is a premier independent, nonprofit research and development organization using multidisciplinary services to provide solutions to some of the world’s most challenging scientific and engineering problems. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, our client-focused, client-funded organization occupies more than 1,500 acres, providing more than 2.3 million square feet of laboratories, test facilities, workshops, and offices for approximately 3,000 employees who perform contract work for government and industry clients.

AFuzion's aviation expertise has infused the majority of the world's aircraft and aviation system development with improved engineering, safety, efficiency, and certification. When safety is critical, 90% of the world's aviation development is infused by the engineering expertise of AFuzion. In 35+ countries, AFuzion’s 50+ senior aviation engineers perform ARP4761/A Safety Assessments, ARP4754A System Design, DO-326A Cyber-Security, DO-178C Software Design, DO-254 Hardware Development, Certification, Training, DER’s, Auditing, Gap Analysis, Mentoring, & Outsourcing.  Civil aviation,  Military, UAV’s, EVTOL, ground systems, satellites: When Safety Is Critical:  AFuzion.  www.afuzion.com

A multi-trillion-dollar market of opportunities exists worldwide for innovators who make traditional industries safer, more efficient and more resilient. From the application of AI to develop predictive maintenance systems for aviation and other heavy industries to the need of increasingly sophisticated information security strategies to safeguard supply chains, manufacturing, hospitals, electric grids and other critical infrastructure, the century ahead provides exciting possibilities to those who innovate through greater alignment between people, industry, educators and global markets.

The vast Port San Antonio technology campus is an international model for this new framework. Home to leading names in aerospace, cybersecurity, defense, robotics and other fields, the organization has helped create nearly 4,000 new jobs in just three years. It is also home to startups now on the leading edge of technological breakthroughs that have proven their resiliency during a global pandemic and which, in collaboration with the Port, are building strong futures ahead.