Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise An Assessment of NASA's Aeronautics Technology Programs (2004) / Chapter Skim
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3 Assessment of the Airspace Systems Program
3 Assessment of the Airspace Systems Program
Pages 43-70
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From page 43... ...
The program is organized into four projects, as follows: · The Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AATT) project focuses on the development of air traffic management (ATM)
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From page 45... ...
The Airspace Operations Systems (AOS) project focuses on the development of better understanding, models, and tools to enhance the efficient and safe operation of aviation systems by human operators.
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From page 46... ...
NASA should explore revolutionary concepts and issues related to distributed air-ground airspace systems, including the distribution of decision making between the cockpit and ground systems, reorganization of how aircraft are routed, and the predicted effect of new concepts on airspace and airport capacity. PROGRAM PLAN Advanced Air Transportation Technologies Pro ject Finding: Support for Basic Research.
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From page 47... ...
Development of a core modeling capability for the evaluation of future operational concepts is a challenge that NASA is well suited to meet. However, experience in other fields demonstrates the difficulty of developing generic models; chances for success are improved when models are more specific.
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From page 48... ...
AN ASSESSMENT OF NASA 'S AERONA UTICS TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS researchers understand and are able to respond to user Most of the human factors research tasks in AOS perspectives. The panel Interviewed many FAA staff to under are baste and should provide useful knowledge and be stand their perception of NASA's airspace research.
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From page 49... ...
The joint project office also has the potential to bring to gether efforts by RTCA committees, industry, FAA, and NASA to develop future operational concepts. The establishment of a joint project office is an important initiative deserving full support by NASA and the FAA, including assignment of senior personnel from NASA and the FAA, who should be physically located in the same office.
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From page 50... ...
The MITRE Corporation is also part of these meetings, where research ideas are discussed with the goal of avoiding unnecessary duplication. New operational concepts developed by NASA are intended to improve the performance of the NAS.
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From page 51... ...
Recommendation: Early Involvement of Users. NASA should involve the FAA and other users, as appropriate, early in the development of new operational concepts and airspace systems research to properly account for the need to maintain safe, continuous operations in both routine and unexpected situations.
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From page 52... ...
Finding: Expedite Departure Path. EDP is the type of research that befits NASA because it has a farsighted vision that goes beyond the constraints of current operational concepts and sets the stage for potential breakthroughs.
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From page 53... ...
There is a very good plan to take EDA to TRL 4 and to continue research beyond FY04 as part of NExTNAS. SlThe goal of CTAS is to provide automation tools that help con~ollers reduce aircraft delays, increase airport capacity, aIld reduce fuel consumption without reducing safety or increasing controller workload.
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From page 54... ...
The mix of personnel appears appropriate. AN ASSESSMENT OF NASA 'S AERONA UTICS TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS Finding: Direct-to-Controller Tool.
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From page 55... ...
Because DAG-TM involves revolutionary changes to current operational concepts, it will be neither quick nor easy to overcome the technical challenges associated with system development, transition, performance, safety, reliability, and affordability or the policy, regulatory, cultural, and other nontechnical or quasitechnical issues and concerns that must be overcome to achieve broad community consensus on any major change to the air transportation system. Also, many DAG-TM concept elements have been dropped because of insufficient funding, including the element that supports research to reduce runway separation requirements.
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From page 56... ...
AN ASSESSMENT OF NASA 'S AERONA UTICS TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS Small Aircraft Transportation System Pro feet Background The SATS vision is to provide "equitable, on-demand, widely distributed, point-to-any-point, near allweather, 21st Century mobility.... The first step is 'to prove SATS works' [by providing al technical, operational, and socio-economic basis for national investment and policy decision."8 The SATS project has two fundamental components.
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From page 57... ...
SOURCE: S Johnson, NASA Langley Research Center, "Small Aircraft Transportation System: systems technology development," presentation to the Airspace Systems Panel on February 25, 2003.
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From page 58... ...
Collectively, the SATS Project Office and the National Consortium for Aviation Mobility are referred to as the SATS Alliance. Po~fo/io I: , ~ ., AN ASSESSMENT OF NASA 'S AERONA UTICS TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS Finding: Deliverables of the Small Aircraft Transportation System Project.
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From page 59... ...
Finding: Benefits of Small Aircraft Transportation System Technologies. SATS technologies, particularly the new cockpit technologies, could provide important benefits both to small aircraft and to aircraft larger than those envisioned for the SATS project.
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From page 60... ...
NASA should use demand projections to identify a range of flight activity that SATS aircraft and technologies might create for specific city pairs. The Transportation Systems Analysis and Assessment task should then use this information to help the SATS project as a whole assess the impact of SATS technologies and aircraft on the National Airspace System (including infrastructure requirements at local airports)
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From page 61... ...
subproject Advanced Airspace Concept task Automated Airport Surface Traffic Control task Centralized Terminal Operation Control task —Massive Point-to-Point and On-Demand Air Transportation System task Surface Operation Automation Research task System Level Capacity Increasing Concept Research task —Systemwide Optimization of the National Airspace System task Terminal Area Capacity Enhancement Concept task
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From page 62... ...
The program plan calls for a synthesis of the most promising concept elements into one or more preferred operational concepts. Finding: Virtual Airspace Simulation Technologies Models.
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From page 63... ...
Recommendation: Interactions between Virtual Airspace Simulation Technologies and Systems Level Integrated Concepts. NASA should foster an ongoing interchange between the SLIC and VAST development teams to ensure that VAST models will contain the features needed to fully evaluate new operational concepts.
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From page 64... ...
Finding: Use of Existing Models for Virtual Airspace Modeling and Simulation. At the outset of the Virtual Airspace Simulation Technologies task, NASA considered whether existing models should be incorporated into the federation being developed by the non-real-time portion of this task to reduce i9"Domain" refers to an area or set of activities, such as ATC operations for aircraft approaching an airport, that deals with common capabilities and data.
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From page 65... ...
is used to assess new operational concepts developed by the Systems Level Integrated Concepts subproject. In an iterative process, the SEA task will develop requirements for a common set of scenarios and metrics appropriate for the VAMS concepts.
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From page 66... ...
Areas of particular interest include the following: Computational models for optimizing operator sensory-motor interactions with automated systems, Collaboration among systems designers and human factors experts to identify, mitigate, anal or eliminate automation-related errors during the design phase, Mitigation and/or elimination of operator confusion about functions and modes of operation of automated systems, Improved understanding of how cognitive limitations combine with fatigue to cause human error, and Improved understanding of how risk and uncertainty affect team decision making. The AOS project supports 11 research tasks grouped in three subprojects: .
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From page 67... ...
NASA Ames has the lead for all AOS research. .-, Portfolio AOS human factors research provides a useful knowledge base that applies to many operational concepts where humans are in the loop.
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From page 68... ...
AN ASSESSMENT OF NASA 'S AERONAUTICS TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS Recommendation: Coordination of Research by the Airspace Operations Systems Project. The AOS project should make a more concentrated effort to coordinate applied research by each AOS subproject with related research by the other projects included in the Airspace Systems Program (Advanced Air Transportation Technologies, Virtual Airspace Modeling and Simulation, and the Small Aircraft Transportation System)
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From page 69... ...
Recommendation: Coordination of the Airspace Operations Systems Project with the Small Aircraft Transportation System and Advanced Air Transportation Technologies Projects. NASA should integrate research by the Physiological Factors task with the SATS project and, separately, with the AATT project.
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From page 70... ...
Human Error and Countermeasures research on managing risk and uncertainty does not focus adequately on distributed team performance issues in coordination with research by the Virtual Airspace Simulation Technologies task, which is part of the VAMS project. Recommendation: Coordination between the Airspace Operations Systems Project and Virtual Airspace Modeling and Simulation Project.
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