Advancing Aviation Systems Through Prototyping and Simulation

Urmila Hiremath and Glenn Roberts

hey're back. This past summer airports in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere began seeing some of the same high levels of flight delays that frustrated travelers and airlines prior to the 2001 industry downturn. Demand for air travel is up due to a resurging economy and the growth of a new breed of low-cost air carriers, and the long-term prognosis is for continued growth, with traffic levels expected to increase by 50 percent or more by the year 2020.

MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) federally funded research and development center, supports the FAA in its efforts to address these delay and capacity issues while at the same time ensuring safety and security. To do this we've built advanced analytical, simulation, visualization, and prototyping capabilities—designed specifically to address complex problems such as redesigning the National Airspace System (NAS) to reduce flight delays.

The advancement of NAS capabilities involves a coordinated set of investments and decisions among a diverse and distributed set of stakeholders. For example, to introduce new technology:

• The FAA may have to invest in capital equipment, procedures development, and workforce training.
• Aircraft and avionics manufacturers may have to develop and certify new equipment.
• Airlines may need to invest in the new equipment and in training for pilots and maintenance crews.
• Military services may also need to purchase equipment and invest in procedural changes and training.
• Municipal airport authorities may need to make capital investments in airport facilities and infrastructure.

Thus, to be successful, all new aviation tools and procedures require mutual acceptance by a wide range of players—short of situations requiring administrative or legislative mandate.

Before such a set of coordinated investment decisions can be made, the various stakeholders must share a common understanding of the improvement, the changes that it will entail, and the benefits that it will provide to each of them and the "system" as a whole. We have found that CAASD's labs are well positioned to bring together stakeholders and let them experience, in a realistic setting, how changes will play out. Participants can operate prototypes and discuss in real time what works and what doesn't, suggesting and agreeing on changes that move the development along.

In the world of aviation—where safety is a primary concern—new concepts, procedures, and systems cannot be introduced hastily. An evolutionary process with direct stakeholder involvement is required.

CAASD's integrated Air Traffic Management (ATM) Laboratory operates at a critical point on this path. The lab represents a realistic, mid-fidelity user experience—its simulations look and feel close to the real thing while also having a high degree of flexibility, enabling us to quickly change the underlying concepts and displays based on user feedback. This provides an ideal testbed for trying out revolutionary new concepts and ideas to see what is possible. With these investments we have established a rapid prototyping capability facilitated by a flexible real-time simulation architecture and a data-rich supporting infrastructure.

The Progression of an Idea

The core objective of the lab is to support concept exploration and development—enabling the spiral development of new concepts by modifying, enhancing, or integrating new capabilities into the lab, developing scenarios in which to examine these concepts, and developing procedures to support them. The combined expertise of CAASD staff members (including former pilots and controllers, human factors engineers, and software and simulation developers) keeps simulations realistic and up to date.

"Storyboarding" is often used as a first step. Tools such as PowerPoint and Macromedia Director allow engineers to sketch out the concept and understand basic requirements. Concept prototypes are then brought to life to allow hands-on demonstrations and evaluations. These provide stakeholders with a better understanding of a proposal's benefits and risks. As the fidelity of a prototype increases—as it gets closer to the final design—so do the costs of making changes. For this reason, we attempt to do as much development work as possible in a laboratory setting where we can uncover any critical issues or flaws before proceeding to a higher fidelity, and higher cost, environment. This approach reduces the cost of fielding new capabilities while also ensuring higher success rates and timely progress toward agreement.

The lab is also used to examine human factors issues. Before any change to an aviation system is made, the FAA must think about how workload, communication, safety, efficiency, and flexibility will be affected. Often these areas are best explored in an immersive environment. We design specific lab scenarios that systematically collect subjective and objective metrics to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the overall concept.

The ultimate goal of all these activities is consensus building. In the lab, pilots, controllers, traffic flow managers, dispatchers, and others can view the simulations together and discuss their concerns. We have found that this environment helps stakeholders to more rapidly reach agreement. Input that would take months to gather if each group of stakeholders were to test the concept separately can sometimes be provided within hours. This makes for a more efficient process, saving valuable time and resources.

For example, in the last two years we had representatives from 18 of the 20 U.S. Air Route Traffic Control Centers in the lab to evaluate high-altitude airspace redesign proposals. The controllers worked the system with the proposed airspace changes. We were able to quickly make changes to the system and scenarios to examine their various issues and suggestions, which helped facilitate consensus building among the controllers.

CAASD staff and air traffic controllers participate in a simulation.

Inside the Lab

The integrated ATM Laboratory hosts an extensible, scalable, real-time distributed simulation environment. It was developed with a layered architecture that brings together an integrated set of simulation capabilities for human-in-the-loop experimentation, evaluation, and demonstration. Lab capabilities include:

• A medium-fidelity reconfigurable fixed-base cockpit simulator coupled to an out-the-window visualization system with a 124-degree field of view.
• An en route air traffic control simulation capability providing a sector suite configuration and interactive simulated pilot (sim-pilot) positions. The sector suite configuration encompasses emulated radar displays and strategic planning and decision-support tools, including a conflict probe and flight information management tool. The en route simulation capability can simulate any number of sectors across the country with current or future airspace adaptation.
• A Terminal Radar Approach Control simulation capable of simulating a variety of current and future terminal environments. This simulation capability also includes sim-pilot positions.
• A tower simulation capability that includes a Bright Radar Indicator Tower Equipment display and provides surface movement of aircraft.
• The Collaborative Routing Coordination Tool (CRCT), a prototype of an integrated collection of traffic management automation functions. These help traffic flow managers to develop strategies for alleviating congestion and avoiding severe weather by allowing them to analyze the impact of proposed strategies. With the CRCT capabilities, the traffic manager is also able to visualize the impact of these different traffic flow management strategies.
• Portable Aviation Visualization Environment, a 3-D visualization environment that is used in conjunction with the cockpit simulation/tower simulation or separately to provide visual representation of physical and abstract concepts.

Toward a More Efficient Future

As MITRE continues to support the FAA and international community in finding cost-effective ways to meet the increasing demands on global aviation, we will continue to evolve faster and more productive ways to explore future concepts, including:

• Mobile Labs: Taking our capabilities to the stakeholders for early concept exploration through the use of smaller computers and portable tools.
• Virtual Simulation Environment: Developing a simulation framework that leverages the resources and capabilities of government- and industry-funded laboratories and facilities to further explore proposed concepts through the integration of these resources through distributed simulation.
• Web-Enabled Simulation: Providing access to laboratory-developed capabilities to a larger number of global participants via Web- and Internet-enabled technologies.

Laboratory prototyping and human-in-the-loop experimentation have proven to be cost-effective tools for defining and refining future ATM concepts. The integrated ATM Laboratory has enabled us to provide our sponsors with critical insight into technical solutions to a number of timely issues, including runway safety, airspace redesign, and the application of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast/Cockpit Display of Traffic Information to procedural applications. Our laboratory capabilities play a crucial role in developing and evaluating these new concepts, building confidence among key stakeholders, and advancing new ideas to implementation in a timely fashion.

For more information, please contact Urmila Hiremath or Glenn Roberts using the employee directory.

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