Wildlife Strike Mitigation in AAM: Key Technology Gaps and Proposed Solutions

Conflicts between aircraft and flying animals, namely birds and bats, are a persistent hazard across a broad range of missions and geographies. This research proposes a technology-based architecture to provide an end-to-end future solution space for wildlife strike risk mitigation in uncrewed Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations. These operations are expected to involve a high density of air vehicles in the region of the atmosphere with the greatest wildlife activity. Many of these operations may be remotely piloted or fully autonomous, removing the primary onboard mitigation of a pilot in the cockpit. Most technologies from the current solution space can be adapted and updated to support future AAM needs, but substantial gaps remain to be filled before full autonomy can be realized. These technological shortfalls should be addressed now, while vehicles and their supporting infrastructure are still in development and mitigation measures can be more readily implemented.