Aviation Week & Space Technology - January 15, 2015

62 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 15-FEBRUARY 1, 2015 AviationWeek.com/awst

I

n 2040, air traffic controllers will “team”

with their computer systems to safely and

efciently manage highly automated passen-

ger aircraft that dynamically collaborate with

the air trafc management system to optimize

routing, capacity and fuel savings while main-

taining safe separation.

That vision of an air traffic

management future—along with

many other advances—is soon to

be tested in the laboratories of

NASA’s Ames Research Center in

Mountain View, California, where

research is underway as part of

the agency’s newly established

Airspace Operations and Safety

(AOS) program.

AOS is divided into three main

projects created to address air

trafc management (ATM)-relat-

ed aspects of three “mega-drivers”

that NASA believes will shape the

future of aviation—the need for

global mobility, environmental

challenges and technology con-

vergence.

For its part, the AOS is tackling

the drivers through a series of

ATM demonstration projects that

individually address the issues in

the near-term (next five years),

the mid-term (2025-30) and the

long-term (2040 and beyond). The

projects often result in the delivery of algorithms or meth-

odologies to the FAA to complement or evolve its en route,

terminal and tower software platforms. NASA recently hand-

ed the FAA a software package that will provide terminal

controllers with user-friendly tools that can help guide an

aircraft on an energy-efcient idling approach from cruise

altitude all the way to the runway. The software is set to be-

come operational at a to-be-announced first airport in 2018.

In other cases, the FAA may not be able to use the product,

but NASA can license the intellectual property to industry-

related entities. An agreement with Boeing allowed the com-

pany to deploy a speed and route advisory tool that it built

into a subscription service that allows airlines to fly shorter

routes and save fuel.

John Croft Mountain View, California

Beyond

NextGen

NASA builds tech ladder to ATM

technologies post-2040

AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

NASA’s vision of the future is based in part on its inde-

pendent assessment of the FAA’s plans for the near- and

mid-term, and how it can bundle or modify certain existing

technologies to increase the holism of the system. In the long-

term there are no such constraints, and that is where re-

searchers expect that the role between controllers and their

automation will fundamentally change. “We can see it coming

on the horizon for controllers,” says research engineer, Tom

Prevot, of automation that will be designed so humans will

not have to second-guess the results. “If there is a system fail-

ure, you can’t throw the human back in the loop and expect

him to figure it out,” says Prevot. “We see that as our charter,

to look at how operators can safely interact with increasingly

autonomous and more automated systems.” The long-term

research will be part of AOS’s Safe Autonomous Systems

Operations (SASO) program to explore post-NextGen tech-

nologies for implementation beyond 2030.

“Foundational” technology development to prevent misread-

ing to reach that state, which NASA defines as the “ATM+3”

package of integrated systems capabilities and generations,

is in the planning stages. ATM+1, an ongoing program that

demonstrates enhancements to the existing ATM system us-

ing technologies already developed,

will run through 2020; ATM+2,

which aims to optimize the fully

functioning NextGen system by

extending existing methods while

researching new technologies,

is ramping up now and will run

through 2030.

Prevot says some of NASA’s

research shows that a “middle

ground,” where automation aug-

ments a traditional design but the

overall operation remains the same,

is to be avoided, as it is the most

complicated and dangerous. “It be-

comes so complex that you increase

the risks and don’t get the benefits

you are looking for,” he says. “I’m

convinced at some point there will

be a role change for [monitoring all

aircraft and alerting]. As long as

one person is watching all the air-

craft, we won’t be able to add many

more aircraft to that piece of sky.”

From a human-factors standpoint,

the goal will be to design an ATM

system using a human-automation

“teaming” concept as a fully integrated operation. Researchers

keep the National Air Trafc Controllers Association informed

and involved in their work at an early stage, says John Rob-

inson, Airspace Technology Development 1 (ATD-1) project

chief engineer at NASA Ames. “As long as we don’t go crazy,

they kind of trust us,” he says. “They know we are not going

to cut their pay and just want to make the National Airspace

System (NAS) operate better.” NASA uses a cadre of retired

controllers for its ATM simulations.

That coordination is most critical for near-term projects

that will be transferred over to the FAA to implement. As

part of the ongoing ATD-1 simulations, NASA switches its

retired controllers with active FAA controllers at certain

times to verify a project “is going in the right direction,” says

American Airlines’ ramp controllers at Char-

lotte (North Carolina) Douglas International

Airport will begin operating a NASA-developed

gate-to-runway tool, shown in a simulation,

that minimizes takeof waiting time.

JOHN CROFT/AW&ST