I am a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer (E-7) veteran and operations professional with 13+ years of experience in air traffic control, training, qualification, compliance, safety, and workforce readiness.

My current work explores a question that becomes increasingly important as autonomous systems scale:

As machines take on more responsibility, how do we ensure the people, organizations, and communities surrounding them are ready when they are required to act?

I apply lessons from high-reliability operations to problems involving human-autonomy interaction, workforce readiness, operational support, market deployment, training effectiveness, and safety-critical systems.

Current Focus

Autonomy does not eliminate the operational ecosystem around a system.

It changes it.

My portfolio explores several parts of that ecosystem, from introducing autonomous systems into new markets to preparing the people, processes, and organizations responsible for supporting them.

                         AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONS
                                  │
        ┌─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┐
        │                         │                         │
  MARKET ENTRY              HUMAN READINESS          OPERATIONAL SUPPORT
        │                         │                         │
      AVCLP                      HARP                 VORA / AV SIM
        │                         │                         │
        └─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┘
                                  │
                         SAFETY & LEARNING
                                  │
                              SIR / CAPA
                                  │
                                  ▼
                       SAFER AUTONOMY AT SCALE

• AVCLP — Autonomous Vehicle City Launch Playbook
  A framework for proactively approaching autonomous vehicle deployment as an operational ecosystem involving cities, communities, infrastructure, education, and local stakeholders. It came from a simple question: how do you get communities to actually buy into change?

• HARP — Human-Autonomy Readiness Protocol
  A framework for evaluating whether humans responsible for supervising or supporting autonomous systems are trained, qualified, current, and ready to intervene when needed. This came from a question I kept coming back to: what happens when the people watching highly capable autonomous systems become complacent?

• VORA — Vendor & Operational Readiness Assessment
  Explores whether the organizations, vendors, and supporting operational structures surrounding autonomous systems are prepared to perform reliably at scale. This one actually came from a question during an interview. I knew what I was trying to explain, but I did a horrible job explaining it. I kept thinking about it afterward, and VORA is what eventually came out of that question.

• AV Incident Command Simulator
  A lightweight interactive training project exploring decision-making, escalation, coordination, and operational judgment during fictional autonomous-vehicle incidents. This started with me thinking about how scenario-based training for AV support could be more interactive than traditional slides and classroom discussion.

• SIR — Safety Intelligence Registry
  Explores how public safety-event information can be structured and reviewed to identify patterns, recurring risks, and operational lessons. This came from lessons learned in aviation and ATC: if you're already collecting safety information, how can you make it easier to actually use instead of just storing it?

• CAPA-Forge
  An agentic AI study project exploring incident classification, root-cause structuring, uncertainty recognition, and corrective/preventive action drafting in a safety-focused domain. This grew out of a related question: can AI help turn messy incident information into a more structured starting point for investigation and corrective action without pretending it knows more than it does?

These are independent portfolio and study projects built from an operations, training, safety, and workforce-readiness perspective. They do not represent the internal systems or procedures of any autonomous vehicle company.

They are not production systems and do not represent the internal tools, processes, or proprietary information of any autonomous-vehicle company.

AVCLP is an independent framework exploring how autonomous vehicle operators could proactively approach new-market entry through operational readiness, local partnerships, workforce development, public safety, accessibility, and community engagement.

Instead of viewing a new market only as a deployment problem, AVCLP asks what happens when the surrounding ecosystem becomes part of launch readiness.

The framework follows:

DISCOVER → MAP → PARTNER → INTRODUCE → VERIFY → DEPLOY → MEASURE → IMPROVE

The repository includes a complete fictional deployment scenario for Redwood Metro, including:

• Market readiness assessment
• Stakeholder ecosystem mapping
• Partnership action planning
• Public-safety preparation
• Workforce development
• Accessibility participation
• Community introduction
• Launch decision logic
• Phased deployment
• 90-day market integration review

Launch the Redwood Metro Market Readiness Dashboard

The interactive demonstration shows Redwood Metro progressing through:

49% T-180 → 80% T-60 → 90% T-30

and demonstrates how unresolved readiness gaps affect GO / CONDITIONAL GO / NO-GO decision logic.

Explore AV City Launch Playbook →

HARP explores operational readiness for people who supervise, support, or intervene in safety-critical autonomous systems.

The core idea:

Autonomy doesn't eliminate humans. It changes where humans enter the system.

HARP focuses on questions such as:

• Remote assistance readiness
• Human intervention
• Qualification and recurrent training
• Shift and crew readiness
• Fatigue considerations
• Safety-critical escalation
• Event review
• Policy and compliance
• Auditability

The project also explores Human-Autonomy eXchange (HAX) as a way to visualize where responsibility transitions between autonomous systems and human operators.

Explore HARP →

Autonomous systems depend on more than the people directly supervising the technology.

They may also depend on external operational partners, vendors, contractors, service providers, and support organizations.

VORA explores how those relationships could be evaluated through structured operational readiness rather than treating vendor status as a simple contract or onboarding question.

Areas of focus include:

• Workforce qualification
• Training status
• Operational readiness
• Compliance
• Performance visibility
• Risk identification
• Corrective actions
• Vendor oversight
• Leadership reporting

Explore VORA →

The projects approach autonomy from different operational layers:

Together they explore a broader question:

How do we operationalize autonomy safely at scale?

I am particularly interested in the space between advanced technology and real-world operations, where training, people, procedures, partnerships, readiness, and accountability still determine whether a system succeeds.

My GitHub also includes smaller operational prototypes and concepts covering:

• Training management
• Safety and incident reporting
• Corrective and preventive action tracking
• Autonomous vehicle incident command
• Operational readiness
• Safety architecture

Cognitive Traffic Management System (CTMS) is a broader autonomous-vehicle safety architecture concept currently kept private while the framework continues to develop.

Also lurking in the background is Paw & Hearth, currently operating in stealth mode.

The competitors have not been informed.

Neither have the animals.

I spent 12 years in the U.S. Navy as an Air Traffic Controller and advanced to Chief Petty Officer (E-7).

My experience includes:

• Safety-critical operations
• Air traffic control
• Training program management
• Controller qualification
• Workforce scheduling
• Operational readiness
• Compliance and standardization
• Leadership and supervision
• Performance reporting
• Process improvement

I currently work in Air Traffic Control training production, supporting controller training, qualification, readiness, and operational visibility.

Currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Business & Technology with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence at California Miramar University.

My interest in AI is primarily operational:

How do organizations safely integrate increasingly capable systems into environments where people, procedures, training, and accountability still matter?

I am particularly interested in work involving:

• Autonomous vehicle operations
• Autonomous systems / Physical AI
• Operational readiness
• Training and workforce development
• Safety operations
• Deployment and market readiness
• Human-autonomy interaction
• Program management
• Operational enablement
• Process and systems improvement

My goal is not to position myself as a software engineer.

I build these projects to demonstrate how I structure operational problems, identify dependencies, design processes, and translate high-reliability operating experience into emerging technology environments.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nic-soria-821543336

All autonomous-systems projects shown here are independent portfolio concepts developed using public information, synthetic examples, and original operational frameworks. They do not represent the internal systems, procedures, data, or intellectual property of any autonomous vehicle operator, technology company, government agency, or other organization.