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| Our mission in the Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) is to provide a better understanding of roles, responsibilities, and requirements for human operators and automation in future air traffic management (ATM) systems. Our focus is on developing and evaluating operational concepts and technologies for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) in a high-fidelity human-in-the-loop (HITL) environment. |
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| Airspace Operations Lab members have received the presitgious 2007 Robert J. Collier Trophy, awarded annually "for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles." |
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Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC)
Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC) is an operational paradigm that proposes to migrate from a static airspace to a dynamic airspace capable of adapting to user demand and a variety of changing constraints. |
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Multi-Sector Planner (MSP)
This MSP concept provides a spectrum of redistributed roles and responsibilities among the air traffic management team members including physical relocation.
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Separation Assurance (SA)
We are researching the fundamental problem of human-automation integration and allocation of roles and responsibilities required to achieve the significant capacity increases targeted for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). |
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Super-Density Operations (SDO)
Terminal Area Operations in the Airspace Operations Laboratory is focused on the problem of how to support air traffic controllers in safely and efficiently managing arriving and departing aircraft within a few hundred miles of the airport. |
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The Airspace Operations Lab evaluates air traffic management (ATM) concepts and explores human-system interaction issues in a high-fidelity human-in-the-loop simulation environment designed to allow rapid prototyping of NextGen concepts. This environment allows simulations of aircraft, ATM systems and communication infrastructure for both current day operations and a variety of future, highly automated concepts. Controller workstations are realistic emulations of today's en route, Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) and oceanic systems. They also include a full suite of advanced decision support tools and automated functions for conflict detection and resolution, trajectory planning, scheduling and sequencing, and managing advanced levels of airborne equipage.
The main goal of the research in the AOL is to evaluate future ATM systems and associated human-system interactions. One of the main challenges of examining future ATM systems is that future operations are generally underspecified in their descriptions of system functionality, procedures, performance measurements, and system status measurements (workload, amount of communication, and similar measurements). More traditional approaches to human factors that examine existing operations by carefully gathering and assessing information related to human performance issues in well-defined systems are not best suited to analyze underspecified future ATM systems.
Our findings help the ATM community to understand potential human performance and human system interactions issues related to NextGen concepts. The results can lead to better understanding of roles and responsibilities for human operators and automation in future ATM systems.
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