Principal Investigators

Nancy Dorighi, NASA Ames Research Center
Stephen R. Ellis, NASA Ames Research Center
Arthur Grunwald, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
Philippe Stassart, Sterling Software

Abstract

The Advanced Display and Manipulative Interface for Air Traffic Management is a project funded by the Terminal Area Productivity (TAP) program out of NASA Headquarters. The project goals are:

- Develop and evaluate perspective format displays of air traffic for improved situation awareness and reduced workload of air traffic controllers under anticipated traffic environments of the future.
- Develop interactive path planning techniques for optimizing traffic flow which will be used with the advanced displays of air traffic.

The project objectives are:

- Design, develop test and evaluate advanced 3D geometrical techniques for presenting aircraft position, spacing, flight path, conflicts, and weather systems. Evaluate manual and automated viewing parameter manipulations.
- Design, develop, test and evaluate manipulative interfaces for route specification and modification due to perturbations in the normal procedures due to weather, runway or gate closures, etc.
Make use of computational techniques to simulate future consequences of route modifications using predictors based on flight plans, runway assignments, and aircraft situation.
- Make use of computational techniques to simulate future consequences of route modifications using predictors based on flight plans, runway assignments, and aircraft situation.

Progress and Status

An Advanced Display for Air Traffic Management is currently in development. It is built upon the Center Tracon Automation System (CTAS), but uses a perspective format display in place of the Primary Graphical User Interface (PGUI) to present the air traffic. A sector within the Denver Center has been modeled and several graphical enhancements to utilize the full potential of the perspective display are being investigated.

Data acquired from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will enable realistic depiction of weather systems in 4D. Storm systems will be shown in location, size, intensity and direction, enabling route replanning to be done more easily.

Scenarios are being developed using Multi-Agent Simulation, developed by MIT, to create potential air traffic situations that would require controller intervention, for example, conflicts or altitude deviations. These scenarios will be used in evaluating the possible benefit of the advanced display. Air traffic controllers will be recruited as subjects to do comparative assessment of performance (conflict detection accuracy, speed, replanning ability) using the scenrios. (PI: Nancy Dorighi)

A software framework has been developed for manual viewing parameter setting (MVPS) in preparation for continued, ongoing developments on automated viewing parameter setting (AVPS) schemes. In the MVPS system, requests for changes in viewing parameter setting are entered manually by the operator by moving viewing parameter manipulation pointers on the screen. The motion of these pointers, which are an integral part of the 3-D scene, is limited to the boundaries of screen. For all viewing operations, e.g. rotation, translation and ranging, the actual change is executed automatically by the system, through gradual transitions with an exponentially damped, sinusoidal velocity profile, in this work referred to as 'slewing' motions. The slewing functions, which eliminate discontinuities in the viewing parameter changes, are designed primarily for enhancing the operator's impression that he, or she, is dealing with an actually existing physical system.

Current, ongoing efforts deal with the development of the AVPS schemes. These schemes employ an optimization strategy, aimed at identifying the best possible vantage point, from which the Air Traffic Control scene can be viewed, for a given traffic situation. (PI: Arthur Grunwald)

Recent Publications

- Ellis, Stephen R. (1994) What are virtual environments? IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications , Jan-Feb, 17-22.
- Ellis, Stephen R., Tyler, Mitchell, Kim, Won S., and Stark, Lawrence (1992) Three dimensional tracking with misalignment between display and control axes. SAE Trans. Journal of Aerospace, 100-1, 985-989.
- Adelstein, Bernard D., Johnston, Eric R., and Ellis, Stephen R. (1992) Spatial sensor lag in virtual environment systems. Proceedings of SPIE Conference on Robotics '92. Boston, MA, November 14, 16, 1992