ATC Technologies for Controller-Managed and Autonomous Flight Operations

*† ‡ § This paper describes the ground-side automation prototyped in the Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) at NASA Ames Research Center in support of two concepts related to Distributed Air Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM) operations: Trajectory-based air traffic control (ATC) and Mixed operations with airborne self separation. The paper presents the design of the ATC automation and the evaluation of both concepts in large scale simulations. Advanced ATC automation was integrated into an emulation of state-of-the-art en route controller displays. The design of automation and controller tools for managing trajectories of data link equipped aircraft is the result of many years of air/ground integration research. The toolset includes highly responsive graphical trajectory planning and conflict probing functions, interactive timelines for aircraft scheduling, speed advisory functions and delay feedback indications for arrival metering. The automation is fully integrated with data link. To support mixed operations additional tasks had to be automated. Even though flight crews of “autonomous” aircraft are responsible for separating their airplane from all other traffic, a complex set of ground-based automation has to take over a number of additional services for autonomous aircraft that controllers and traffic managers otherwise provide for managed aircraft. The first part of the paper describes the design rationale for the ground-based automation in the context of current air traffic modernization trends. A detailed description of the prototyped ATC technologies is provided in the appendix. The second part of the paper presents the ground-side perspective of each of the concepts effectiveness in terms of capacity, controller workload, safety, efficiency, and controller acceptability. Simulation studies using the trajectory-based ATC managed operations have demonstrated that controllers were able to manage separation and arrival times above current day traffic volumes by trajectory adjustments alone, without significantly changing roles and responsibilities of pilots and controllers. A joint Ames/Langley simulation of mixed operations shows a significant potential for much higher capacity gains. However, a number of safety concerns would need to be addressed before airborne self-separation could be operationally implemented in high density mixed environments. DAG-TM results indicate that trajectory-based ATC with integrated ground-side DSTs and airborne FMSs can safely increase capacity in the near to medium-term and could provide the environment required to enable concepts like airborne self-separation. DAG-TM research was funded by the Airspace Systems program as part of the Advanced Air Transportation Technologies project. DAG-TM activities were conducted by NASA Ames, NASA Langley, and NASA Glen Research Centers.