A.A. Trani
For the past three years the Transportation Systems Laboratory (TSL) has conducted research with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the optimization of aircraft landing operations at congested airports. The computer simulation-optimization models developed by the Virginia Tech TSL have been implemented in large scale aviation simulation models to predict airport capacity and delay.
A current effort is to "port" these computer simulation-optimization models to a real-time environment to be used by Air Traffic Controllers stationed at control towers to improve the tactical and strategic planning of aircraft arrivals and departures. There is a realization that in real-time the algorithms developed will reduce fuel consumption for the airlines and alleviate some of the workload imposed in ATC controllers.
A possible research alternative for ATC simulations will be the use of the CAVE to visualize aircraft operations and provide a surrogate simulation environment where we could investigate the best interfaces and information presented to local and ground traffic controllers. The use of real-time visualization and simulation with a supercomputer would offer obvious benefits as the proposed tactical ATC control system will be fine tuned off-line with no risks involved. It is believed that a visualization tool that offers high visual fidelity coupled with large computing power, would be an excellent resource to study the complex interactions of Air Traffic man-machine systems before their implementation.