Remote Airport Traffic Control Center (2008 - 2012) Final Presentation and Workshop - Extended Abstracts

The present report contains the extended and revised version of the abstracts collection of the presentations given at the final international workshop of the DLR-project RAiCe (Remote Airport traffic Control Center, 2008 - 2012), held on November 30 2012 in Braunschweig. The RaiCe presentations are complemented by two external contributions,from the Swedish ANSP LFV and company Frequentis, representing the industrial perspective on Remote Tower research and development. The RaiCe workshop was a satellite event of the Second SESAR Innovation Days (SID 2012, Nov. 27-29) which was held in Braunschweig, following the first one in Toulouse 2011. One of the RaiCe validation results papers was presented at SID2012 and is also included in the present report for com-pleteness, besides inclusion in the SID2012 proceedings. In addition to the collection of extended abstracts and an introduction, besides some general refer-ences a list of the publications of the DLR Remote Tower Group (time frame 2002 – 2012) is provid-ed. A list of the workshop participants is added as part of the Appendix

Experimental system for remote airport traffic control center research

In this paper research is described with the long term goal of airport traffic control without the need of a real tower building, the Virtual Tower. Specifically we address the intermediate step of a Remote Airport Tower Center (RTC) for remote surveillance and control of small airports. An experimental high resolution video panorama system was developed as main HMI to replace the real far view out of the tower windows. Field tests of the reconstructed far view yield the effective visual resolution of a 180°-video panorama in agreement with the theoretical predictions. The digital video panorama provides the framework for video-see-through augmented vision by integration of additional information like weather and transponder data, and it allows for panorama replay. An integrated zoom function provides a "foveal" component by means of a remotely controlled pan-tilt zoom camera, including object tracking options. Besides the experimental system for field testing a simulation environment is described, based on a two-airport tower-simulator. It supports the design of the new work environment including safety aspects based on statistically confirmed data from reproducible simulator experiments with professional tower controllers