December 21, 2005

The Simulation & Analysis Team hosted a demonstration by Rowan University students. They demonstrated the software programs they have developed as part of a Cooperative Research Agreement with the FAA. Two teams of students presented:

Team 1: Upgraded the Trajectory Graphical User Interface (GUI) application developed last year by Rowan. This application is developed in Java utilizing the Simulation & Analysis Team's Oracle tables of aircraft trajectories. The tool provides a graphical user interface to support the evaluation of aircraft trajectories queried from the Oracle tables. The tool currently uses Oracle but can use any database platform that complies with Java's JDBC interface. See http://acy.tc.faa.gov/cpat/docs/atca2005_finalt.pdf for details on this application.

Team 2: This group of students developed a new application called Flight GUI again using Java and JDBC and existing Oracle tables. However, this application animates the path of two aircraft within separation distances. These events displayed are psuedo-conflicts generated the FAA to test conflict probes. This GUI supports evaluation of these conflict probes. Previous software utilizing proprietary software was discussed in the following paper http://acy.tc.faa.gov/cpat/docs/atca_2002_a3a.pdf.

Click Photo to Enlarge.

August 15-18, 2005
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference hosted in San Francisco - The Simulation and Analysis Team is presenting a paper, titled "Determination of Lateral Flight Adherence in Recorded Air Traffic Data." Robert Oaks of General Dynamics and Mike Paglione are the paper authors.

August 10, 2005
ATCA Training Symposium in Washington, DC is a one day symposium on issues confronting the training of future air traffic controllers. The Simulation and Analysis Team is presenting the results of the simulation titled, "Initial Study of Advanced Controller Training in a Virtual Environment."

June 24, 2005
Under the FAA/EUROCONTROL Research & Development Committee (RDCom) Action Plan 16: Common Trajectory Prediction Capability (AP16) was established in 2003. It includes members from Eurocontrol, FAA, NASA Ames, CENA, and industry. A technical interchange meeting was hosted by the William J. Hughes Technical Center for AP16 on June 20-24, 2005. The meeting included technical discussions, project status sessions, tool demonstrations, and planning sessions for the various activities being implemented under AP16. As part of the community outreach objectives of the team, a Speaker Series was provided to the Technical Center on June 22nd. The Speaker Series briefings were very positive, generating good Technical Center participation and discussions. A meeting with John Wiley, Office of Integrated Engineering Services, also took place on June 24th with the leads of AP16. The focus of this meeting was to foster continued FAA participation on AP16 and determine additional FAA clients for AP16 deliverables, such as tools and data access.

June 8, 2005
FAA Implements New CRDA with Optimal Systems The FAA recently entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA) with Optimal Systems. The collaborative research is in increased predictability in the National Airspace System (NAS). A concept paper described a vision of an integrated modeling capability that will provide answers to policy level decision-makers with regard to changes in the NAS. This vision was developed in response to the needs of the aviation modeling and simulation community. The vision presented in this concept paper is the Aviation Integrated Reasoning Modeling Matrix (AIRMM), an envisioned architecture and system with a capability to provide a robust, integrated, decision-centric environment that supports the analysis needs of policy and decision-makers. The AIRMM system utilizes state-of-the-art technologies from decision systems, information systems, and modeling and simulation systems. Various models of the system were developed in a prototyping activity. The objectives of this research are to organize a team that will continue the development of AIRMM and reach its goal of an integrated state-of-the-art decision-making tool that could be used across multiple domains and organizations. The Government’s Principal Investigator is Albert Schwartz, Office of Integrated Engineering Services. This CRDA was awarded on June 8 and has a duration of 36 months. It is expected this CRDA will provide a core capability that will support small to moderate demonstrations and analysis using the AIRMM concept.

May 6, 2005
ATO's FAA WJH Technical Center Simulation and Analysis Team has published the Global Positioning System Outage En Route Simulation (GOERS) test report. The objective of the study was to provide an initial examination of the workload and operational issues associated with a controller's ability to manage a Global Positioning System/Wide Area Augmentation System/Local Area Augmentation System outage situation under the conditions simulated. Twenty-seven Certified Professional Controllers staffed Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center sectors emulated on a high fidelity platform. Three environments and three outage conditions were examined. Controllers indicated an increase in workload with GPS outages and provided comments indicating operationally important areas of increased workload that included congested frequencies and increased coordination. The conclusion made in this report is that there was a relevant effect of GPS outages on workload as simulated; however, controllers were generally able to compensate for the increase. Operational issues that became apparent included the need for clear procedures on both the air and ground sides during an outage, frequency congestion, and equipment identifier interpretation. The FAA Required Navigation Performance Division sponsored the research. The report is available at: www.tc.faa.gov/acb300/330_documents.

April 26, 2005
Evaluation of Modified Air Traffic Control Phraseology for Area Navigation (RNAV) Standard Instrument Departure Clearances (Phase II) “CLIMB VIA”
The Simulation and Analysis Team will be conducting the second phase of the “Climb Via” study. The study is being held at the NASA AMES Crew-Vehicle Systems Research Facility (CVSRF) May 3-5 and at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center May 10-12. Phase II is focused exclusively on the issues that were identified as potential problems during the cognitive walkthroughs conducted in phase I. These issues ranged from pilot misunderstandings of clearances to the potential inability of the onboard flight management system (FMS) to properly execute those clearances. This effort will use the NASA B747-400 and FAA B737-800 flight training simulators, and will involve assessment of pilot responses to four different departure scenarios. 20 flight crews from United, Northwest, American, and Southwest Airlines will be participating in the study. The objective is to investigate pilot/co-pilot communication and the associated interaction with their navigational equipment as a function of the departure scenario being examined. We will be collecting both subjective data from participants and simulator specific objective measures of performance. The culmination of this work will be used as input to drive potential phraseology and/or procedural changes relevant to both conventional and RNAV departures.

March 23, 2005
ATO's Technical Center Simulation and Analysis Team published the Aircraft Landing Lights Enhance Runway Traffic Safety (AL²ERTS) test report on March 23rd, 2005. Researchers from the Simulation and Analysis Team and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC) conducted a real-time, human-in-the-loop simulation in October 2003-January 2004. The objective of the study was to investigate the safety effects of standardizing the use of aircraft landing lights in the airport environment. Specifically, the simulation team explored the procedural use of landing lights as a direct message to other pilots indicating that aircraft were cleared to depart. The simulation utilized NASA ARC’s level D certified, Boeing 747-400 simulator. Thirty-two pilots participated in the study as either the Captain or First Officer of a B747-400 simulator crew. The pattern of results suggest that standardizing the use of aircraft landing lights to indicate that aircraft were cleared to depart prevented or reduced the severity of runway incursions or accidents, and increased pilot situation awareness. The FAA Office of Runway Safety and Operational Services sponsored the research. The report is available at: www.tc.faa.gov/acb300/330_documents .

February 3, 2005
ATO's Technical Center Simulation and Analysis Team published an Advanced Controller Training in a Virtual Environment-1 (ACTIVE-1) test report, on February 3rd. The objective of the real-time simulation study was to determine whether exposure to a series of challenging scenarios, using a state-of-the-art tower simulator staffed by fully qualified and current tower controllers, would result in a measurable improvement in the performance of experienced controllers. Participants identified needed improvements to the simulator. However, results indicated that the tower simulator is useful for training experienced tower controllers. For example, detection of hear-back/read-back errors improved significantly. The tower simulator's ability to allow real-time controller and observer participation gives it great potential as a training tool. The research was conducted April 5 - 16, 2004, and was sponsored by the FAA Office of Runway Safety and Operational Services in cooperation with the FAA Alaska Region and Civil Aerospace Medical Institute. The test was held at the University of Anchorage, Alaska's Tower Simulator. The report is available at: www.tc.faa.gov/acb300/330_documen

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