AcListant with Continuous Learning: Speech Recognition in Air Traffic Control (EIWAC 2019)

Increasing air traffic creates many challenges for air traffic management (ATM). A general answer to these challenges is to increase automation. However, communication between air traffic controllers (ATCos) and pilots is widely analog and far away from digital ATM components. As communication content is important for the ATM system, commands are still entered manually by ATCos to enable the ATM system to consider the communication. However, the disadvantage is an additional workload for the ATCos. To avoid this additional effort, automatic speech recognition (ASR) can automatically analyze the communication and extract the content of spoken commands. DLR together with Saarland University invented the AcListant® system, the first assistant based speech recognition (ABSR) with both a high command recognition rate and a low command recognition error rate. Beside the high recognition performance, AcListant® project revealed shortcomings with respect to costly adaptations of the speech recognizer to different environments. Machine learning algorithms for the automatic adaptation of ABSR to different airports were developed to counteract this disadvantage within the Single European Sky ATM Research Programme (SESAR) 2020 Exploratory Research project MALORCA. To support the standardization of speech recognition in ATM, an ontology for ATC command recognition on semantic level was developed to enable the reuse of expensively manually transcribed ATC communication in the SESAR Industrial Research project PJ.16-04. Finally, results and experiences are used in two further SESAR Wave-2 projects. This paper presents the evolution of ABSR from AcListant® via MALORCA, PJ.16-04 to SESAR Wave-2 projects

ATTENTION: TARGET AND ACTUAL – THE CONTROLLER FOCUS

The main task of an air traffic controller (ATCO) is to ensure safe and efficient air traffic control (ATC). Therefore, the ATCO needs to have his/her attention at the right place at the right time on the controller working position’s displays. This will be even more challenging in the future with increasing information diversity, growing levels of automation, more complex air traffic mix, new technologies, and bigger screens. However, to deal with these challenges an attention guiding assistance system is developed to support the ATCO. This system needs to determine the area of target attention due to relevant upcoming ATC events. It should also evaluate the current area of attention as a function of the ATCO's gaze, e.g., via eye-tracking, and evaluate it. If there is a mismatch between target and actual area of attention, the attention focus of the ATCO has to be appropriately guided to relevant areas via cues. Based on an analysis of attention and situation awareness, attention guidance mechanisms have been developed and successfully validated in human-in-the-loop trials. ATCOs felt well-supported by visual non-intrusive guidance cues and even wanted to have such functionality in today’s working positions

Macroscopic Analysis to identify Stage Boundaries in Multi-Stage Arrival Management

Accommodating the air traffic growth, reducing arrival delay is one of the most important functions of designing the ATM system. One of the newest concepts to further optimize arrival flows is multi-stage arrival management, proposed by DLR, in which different guidance principles to manage the arriving traffic are implemented in different stages. These stages are optimized to the core management task to be done in a certain area of the arrival stream and the conditions of the surrounding environment. This paper discusses this concept through a macroscopic analysis on the overall arrival traffic flows. Further, this paper analyzes parts of the multi-stage arrival management concept applied to Tokyo International Airport as a case study. A stochastic characteristic of arrival trajectories will be discussed as a counterpart of conventional deterministic trajectorybased operation based on data-driven analysis and arrival procedures at the airport. The best strategies of shifting arrival flow control to time-based management is analyzed based on the stochastic data analysis. Impacts of pop-up aircraft are discussed as one of the causes to increase uncertainties in aircraft trajectory management

The Herschel-Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI): instrument and pre-launch testing

This paper describes the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI), to be launched onboard of ESA's Herschel Space Observatory, by 2008. It includes the first results from the instrument level tests. The instrument is designed to be electronically tuneable over a wide and continuous frequency range in the Far Infrared, with velocity resolutions better than 0.1 km/s with a high sensitivity. This will enable detailed investigations of a wide variety of astronomical sources, ranging from solar system objects, star formation regions to nuclei of galaxies. The instrument comprises 5 frequency bands covering 480-1150 GHz with SIS mixers and a sixth dual frequency band, for the 1410-1910 GHz range, with Hot Electron Bolometer Mixers (HEB). The Local Oscillator (LO) subsystem consists of a dedicated Ka-band synthesizer followed by 7 times 2 chains of frequency multipliers, 2 chains for each frequency band. A pair of Auto-Correlators and a pair of Acousto-Optic spectrometers process the two IF signals from the dual-polarization front-ends to provide instantaneous frequency coverage of 4 GHz, with a set of resolutions (140 kHz to 1 MHz), better than < 0.1 km/s. After a successful qualification program, the flight instrument was delivered and entered the testing phase at satellite level. We will also report on the pre-flight test and calibration results together with the expected in-flight performance

What is difficult at intersections? Virtual and real driving

One important source of drivers’ errors is a high level of stress which may hinder the perception and processing of relevant information. In a real-driving study the visibility within the traffic situation was shown to be a major factor increasing stress. A driving simulator study with a systematic variation of visibility found that only an obstructed view of possibly dangerous vehicles increases stress. This knowledge can be used for future intersection ADAS specifically designed to reduce stress. The combination of real and virtual driving is ideally suited to systematically analyse factors influencing driving safety with a large validity

AIM – APPLICATION PLATFORM INTELLIGENT MOBILITY

In order to address the complexity of modern Intelligent Transportation Systems and Services (ITS) the German Aerospace Center will build an Application Platform for Intelligent Mobility (AIM) in the region of Brunswick, Germany. This large scale testing facility will connect research with every day applications and focuses on demand driven progress. AIM is designed to be a neutral and openly accessible platform for industry, public authorities and science, research and development. The versatile aspects of mobility and their interdependencies will be addressable in a real life environment with the scale of Brunswick city and surroundings. This paper introduces AIM and documents its progress

Fast wie ein Mensch - nur zuverlässiger

Technik zur Unterstützung des Fahrers - sicher, zuverlässig, ergonomisc

Car 2X- zukünftige Systeme der Kommunikation des Fahrzeugs mit seiner Umgebung

Die Vorlesung beschäftigt sich mit der Beschreibung der unterschiedlichen Entwicklungen im Bereich der Fahrzeug-Fahrzeug-Kommunikation zwischen den USA, Europa und Japan, zeigt den aktuellen Stand der Entwicklungen in Europa auf und informiert über technischen Realisierungen mit unterschiedlichen Ansätzen. Hierbei wird auf den CALM-Standard sowie auf den IEEE 802.11 p Ansatz eingegangen. Im Weiteren wird in groben Zügen das Car2Car Manifesto des car2car-Konsortiums, sowie einige Funktionsbeispiel aus diesem Umfeld vorgestellt und mit einem Ausblick auf zukünftige Entwicklungen geschlossen

Zukünftige Entwicklung in der Lotsenassistenz

Was macht der Lotse heute? Was hat sich an seinem Arbeitsplatz verändert