Creation of Conflict-free Taxi Routes for Aircraft with Evolutionary Algorithms

Flight operations for aircraft are influenced by tools like arrival and departure managers, which create time constrained flight trajectories, but there is a lack of surveillance for ground operations. Therefore, DLR develops TRACC, a surface management system supporting trajectory based ground operations. It is able to create conflict-free “4D”-taxi routes using evolutionary algorithms, where especially the arrival time at the departure runway is optimized. TRACC creates the controller commands, controls deviations from the planned routes and analyses the impact on the ground taxi system

DESIGN AND FINDINGS OF A WORKSHOP REGARDING SECURITY PROCEDURES AND DEMAND FOR TECHNICAL SUPPORT AT A GROUND CONTROLLER WORKING POSITION

Unquestionably, security awareness is an important topic in air traffic control. The ground controller support system TraMICS includes already a security component and displays an indication regarding the current security situation to the controller. This paper reports about a workshop performed with eight controllers. It describes the methodology and the results of the workshop aimed to find out, how the security situations indicator, its concept, calculation and notification could be improved. Moreover, since security situations interrupt planned workflow, the paper investigates understanding and operational interpretation of the term disturbance in the air traffic ground controller domain and specifies its definitio

CONCEPTUALISATION FOR EVALUATING THE CURRENT RESILIENCE STATUS OF A HUMAN-IN-THE-LOOP CONTROLLER SUPPORT SYSTEM

Currently the resilience in air traffic management is evaluated by comparing the usage of an enhanced or new system to the baseline without this system. Our idea is to assess the resilience of a system without comparing it to a baseline. Therefore, appropriate performance indicators and their thresholds are to be selected to evaluate the current resilience of the system itself in real-time. A system consisting of an air traffic controller support system and the air traffic controller operating it is selected as use case. The paper describes the concept of current resilience and applies it to the use case. To investigate the validity of this approach for the selected use case a dashboard visualizing the necessary parameters is propose

Prediction of Stress Level from Speech – from Database to Regressor

The term stress can designate a number of situations and affective reactions. This work focuses on the immediate stress reaction caused by, for example, threat, danger, fear, or great concern. Could measuring stress from speech be a viable fast and non-invasive method? The article describes the development of a system predicting stress from voice – from the creation of the database, and preparation of the training data to the design and tests of the regressor. StressDat, an acted database of speech under stress in Slovak, was designed. After publishing the methodology during its development in [1], this work describes the final form, annotation, and basic acoustic analyses of the data. The utterances presenting various stress-inducing scenarios were acted at three intended stress levels. The annotators used a "stress thermometer" to rate the perceived stress in the utterance on a scale from 0 to 100. Thus, data with a resolution suitable for training the regressor was obtained. Several regressors were trained, tested and compared. On the test-set, the stress estimation works well (R square = 0.72, Concordance Correlation Coefficient = 0.83) but practical application will require much larger volumes of specific training data. StressDat was made publicly available

Real-Time Calculation and Adaption of Conflict-Free Aircraft Ground Trajectories

To improve the quality of airport surface operations and to pave the way for more autonomous systems, the calculation and adaptation of ground trajectories for aircraft is the backbone for every improvement. These trajectories should be conflict free and easily adaptable to changing conditions in real-time, but on the other hand optimized regarding configurable criteria. This paper describes how this can be achieved using artificial intelligence, especially a multiobjective A* algorithm coupled with a genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm uses a flexible objective function that can be used to tune the resulting trajectories to the specific needs of the airport/air navigation service provider

IMPLICATIONS AND BENEFITS OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS’ MANUAL ASSESSMENT OF THE SECURITY SITUATION INDICATOR

Validation trials with air traffic controllers followed by a workshop have confirmed, that the Security Situations Indicator provides valuable information at the controller working position. However, the possibility to adjust it by a competent person was proposed. This paper investigates potential implications of manual changes and proposes rules to maximize effectiveness. It outlines the design of the necessary user interaction and information and closes with some visualized examples

GREENER CONFLICT-FREE TAXI TRAJECTORIES USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

In order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, it has become evident that it is necessary to reduce the impact of the whole aviation sector on the environment. The project GreAT (Greener Air Traffic Operations) aims to showcase how a combination of advanced air traffic management tools and procedures for departure, en-route, arrival and surface operations can support this reduction of aviations environmental impact. For the surface operations of aircraft at the airport, the surface management system TraMICS (Traffic Management Intrusion and Compliance System Plus) has been developed to support ground controllers with a security situation assessment and trajectory advisories for taxi operations. TraMICS uses a genetic algorithm to plan and adjust taxi-trajectories in real time to resolve conflicts between aircraft on the ground, with the aim to reduce holding time after engine startup as well as preventable braking and acceleration actions due to other traffic. This paper presents a case study, comparing different configuration profiles for generating conflict-free trajectories using TraMICS and Hamburg airport topology. By using a trajectory configuration profile with higher penalties for holds during the taxi phase, it was possible to create more efficient taxi trajectories with 80 percent fewer holds

VALIDATION OF THE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT INTRUSION AND COMPLIANCE SYSTEM AS SECURITY-AWARENESS-COMPONENT AT THE CONTROLLER WORKING POSITION

The work of an air traffic ground controller can be affected by various security events. The Traffic Management Intrusion and Compliance System uses possible individual indicators to calculate a Security Situation Indicator that provides an assessment of the current security situation to the controller at their working position. To validate the benefit of the tool, real time simulations were conducted at the Air Traffic Validation Center of DLR. This paper describes the methods, the execution and the results of human-in-the-loop experiments performed with ground and apron controller

Speaker Authorization for Air Traffic Control Security

The number of incidents in which unauthorized persons break into frequencies used by Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) and give false instructions to pilots, or transmit fake emergency calls, is a permanent and apparently grow�ing threat. One of the measures against such attacks could be to use automatic speaker recognition on the voice radio channel to disclose the potential unau�thorized speaker. This work describes the solution for a speaker authorization system in the Security of Air Transport Infrastructures of Europe (SATIE) project, presents the architecture of the system, gives details on training and testing proce�dures, analyses the influence of the number of authorized persons on the system’s performance and describes how the system was adapted to work on the radio channel

Management of Time Based Taxi Trajectories coupling Departure and Surface Management Systems

This paper presents concept and results of the coupling of the surface management system research prototype “TRACC: Taxi Routing for Aircraft: Creation and Controlling” with the departure management system “CADEO: Controller Assistance for Departure Optimisation”. TRACC supports Air Traffic Controllers ) in creating optimized conflict-free taxi trajectories as well as with conflict detection and resolution. TRACC features speed control as new element of surface management and extends the concept of time-based trajectories to the ground. With up-to-date trajectories and therewith accurate taxi time prediction, the cooperation with the runway sequence optimizer prototype CADEO is enhanced. Within this paper both tools are introduced briefly and necessary adaptions of CADEO and TRACC for a combined application are described like push-back management and management of target start-up times. Results of first simulation runs are presented