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+ Home > Facilities & Capabilities > FFC > Projects > SOAR
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Introduction NASA's Airportal Project, part of the NextGen Project, in conjunction with Optimal Synthesis Inc. (OSI), is researching future automation technology for surface traffic management at major airports. OSI developed the Surface Operations (SOAR) concept, which includes automation components in the tower and in the cockpit. The Ground-operation Situation Awareness and Flow Efficiency tool (GoSAFE) is a tower automation tool that will generate efficient ground taxi instructions with timing restrictions at specific spots in the airport, and deliver these clearances to aircraft via datalink. By using cockpit automation to follow the taxi and timing instructions, the aircraft can avoid queues and delays on the airport surface. Study Objectives
+ Back to Top Simulation Design GoSAFE was integrated into a simulation of the east side of the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) airport. Experimental runs compared current operations with different levels of GoSAFE automation using the same scenarios. + Back to Top Customer Benefits In addition to the feedback provided by the participants, the integration effort clarified a number of fundamental questions that will require further research before surface automation on this scale can be designed to interface with controllers, real traffic, and the automation that will be present in other air traffic control domains in the future. An additional benefit of these simulations was the expansion of our real time simulation environment, called Virtual Airspace Simulations Technology (VAST), to include the infrastructure and target generation capability of emulating the cockpit automation by parsing and driving targets in compliance with timed trajectories on the ground. + Back to Top Customer Comments "OSI is extremely grateful for the opportunity to perform human-in-the-loop experiments for studying the SOAR concept. Since the SOAR concept represents a radically new approach involving collaboration of advanced automation systems, it is imperative that roles and responsibilities between the operators and the systems, as well as the procedures involved, be carefully studied in a realistic environment. FutureFlight Central is a world-class facility ideal for supporting research of this nature, so that we have the opportunity to adjust the concept before committing too much in the direction of the technology development." -- Victor Cheng, Ph.D., Vice President, Optimal Synthesis Inc.
"Using FutureFlight Central allowed our participants to experience our prototype taxi tool in a realistic environment." -- Lynne Martin, NASA Ames Researcher
+ Back to Top Summary A prototype of advanced futuristic surface automation was successfully demonstrated in FutureFlight Central. The simulation of the east side of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport served as a high fidelity test bed for the experiment. Four retired tower controllers participated in each simulation, controlling simulated aircraft from the east tower. Local and ground controllers using FutureFlight Central and GoSAFE provided valuable feedback to the researcher and concept developer on the SOAR design, information display requirements, and the roles and responsibilities of the automation and the humans for advanced surface automation. + Back to Top |
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