Report on Run-Time Assurance for eVTOL Aircraft available on NASA Tech Reports Server

A recently completed contractor report investigating the utility of run-time assurance (RTA) architectures for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft has been posted on NTRS, the NASA Technical Reports Server. The report summarizes a collaborative effort led by researchers from Barron Associates to demonstrate and evaluate the application of RTA to assure the safety of flight control functions of an eVTOL aircraft with highly automated or autonomous flight capability and a single onboard pilot. The research also evaluated the more recent safety engineering technique known as Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) as a potentially valuable tool to augment traditional standards-based safety processes for these novel aircraft designs. The report is available to the public at https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210026909.