German Aerospace Congress 2009

The German Aerospace Congress is organised annually by DGLR, the German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics. This year it took place at the Eurogress Conference Centre in Aachen, Germany, from September 8 to 10, 2009.

On the second day of the conference, DLR presented the AT-One paper on Virtual Block Control and Separation Bubbles. In contrast to the paper presented at ICNS 2009 in Arlington, this paper had a focus on evaluation of the concepts in cockpit simulator trials.

The conference sessions were generally set up with a broad range of topics so that there were not too many presentations directly focussing on ATM. Some of the presentations were mere descriptions of work approaches and used facilities, but they were nonetheless interesting. The sessions I attended described new approaches to avionics and control systems, especially for small private aircraft, knowledge management, simulator development, data analysis, and last but not least ATM.

A very interesting presentation from one of my AT-One colleagues described a revolutionary approach to controlling aircraft, referred to as sectorless ATM. In that scenario several tactical controllers share one giant airspace sector and control or rather guide a number of aircraft (between 3 to 8) through that sector. Although the concept still has some weaker points (controller communication, priority rules) it is an interesting starting point for innovative research in that area.

NARSIM Simulations on Virtual Block Control and Separation Bubbles

During the last two weeks NLR successfully carried out simulations on Virtual Block Control and the use of Separation Bubbles for Taxiway Conflict Alerting under low visibility conditions. The project was carried out by AT-One, the ATM research alliance between the Dutch and German Aerospace Research Institutes NLR and DLR, for Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation.
The objective of the project was to evaluate operational improvements that would support air traffic controllers in more efficiently and more safely handling airport ground traffic when visibility conditions are so bad that pilots cannot avoid collisions by looking outside the cockpit (VIS-3). Furthermore, it was assumed that there were no additional means in the cockpit that would increase pilot situational awareness, such as moving map displays.
In an earlier workshop with controllers from several European airports it was concluded that a concept for Virtual Block Control in combination with a safety net for separation (Separation Bubbles) would most probably be the most effective improvement for ground control under the specified conditions.
In order to evaluate the new tools and the associated operational procedures, the NARSIM Tower simulation environment of NLR was equipped with prototype virtual stop bars on a ground traffic radar display and appropriate alerting services for stop bar and separation violations. Rotterdam Airport (EHRD) was chosen as the geographic location as it was considered to have an ideal layout for evaluating all operational challenges when using the new tools. Above that the Rotterdam set-up was already successfully used for controller training.



Two teams of controllers (from Rotterdam and Stockholm) took part in the evaluation sessions that assessed operational procedures and, in a later stage, traffic throughput together with automation trust, impact on mental workload, situational awareness, and general system usability. Results will be reported to Eurocontrol in a final report at the end of this year. It is expected that Eurocontrol will publish that report in early 2009.

ATC Global

This year the major European event in air traffic control known as ATC Maastricht moved to Amsterdam's RAI and consequently changed its name to ATC Global. With the exhibition area being almost twice as large as the one in Maastricht's MECC also the number of visitors seemed to have increased.

Some of the stands were quite impressive regarding the effort spent to give demonstrations of the latest developments in ATM technology. However, from a research point of view not much innovative tools and facilities were shown. Of course, there were highlights again from companies like Saab, AviBit , SELEX or Frequentis. They showed quite interesting tower control tools, such as Electronic Flight Strips (EFS) and Departure Managers (DMAN). Innovative developments, however, such as route planning and conformance monitoring were mostly not on public display yet, as some of these tools are either still in stages of development or not mature enough to be sold. And selling still is one of the major drivers of this exhibition.

AT-One presented themselves as one of the leading research alliances in Europe and caught much attention with their hourly demonstration of ASAS flights. These flights were carried out by two flight simulators, one from NLR and one from DLR, approaching Prague airport. Another great feature of the AT-One stand was the flexible NARSIM-Tower simulator which was displayed in a small, moveable version, however, with all the functionality of its larger brother at the NLR premises.

Although I might have missed some of the items at display in Amsterdam this year, as time was limited, there was a demonstration at the Eurocontrol stand that caught my attention: Skybrary. I will dedicate another post to this new aviation safety wiki site soon.