A harmonized concept of operations (ConOps) for future surface operations that considers the surface management practices and policies that currently exist in the U.S. and Europe was developed by NASA and DLR. The high-level concept includes a surface traffic scheduling system that generates conflict-free four-dimensional trajectories (4DTs) for all aircraft on the airport surface and on-board or ground-based guidance to enable the flight crew to adhere to the trajectories. This new vision aims to reduce delays caused by disruptions and purely reactive surface guidance and increase efficiency by an optimized use of resources supported by the new concept based on high sophisticated planning means. It further results in reduced environmental impact of the surface operations. This paper identifies and describes the necessary functions of the concept and explains the relationships among them. The concept is supported by results from research conducted to assess the feasibility of this concept. The implementation of this concept poses some challenges that were used as a basis to derive research requirements that will be jointly addressed by NASA and DLR in the future. Nomenclature 4DT= Four-Dimensional Trajectory A-CDM = Airport Collaborative Decision Making ANSP = Air Navigation Service Provider ATC = Air Traffic Control ATCO = Air Traffic Controller CADEO = Controller Assistance for Departure Optimization
Cargo airlines and other aircraft operating agencies are interested in commercially exploiting and benefiting from the technical possibilities provided by unmanned aircraft systems. Use cases could be long-range unmanned air transport, flight calibration, or surveillance missions. It is natural that, depending on weight and size, unmanned aircraft are going to use the existing ground infrastructure together with manned aircraft. However, it is also a well-known fact that remotely piloted or automatic / autonomous unmanned aircraft do not have the same abilities and behavior as manned aircraft. There is a need to achieve a safe, orderly and expeditious flow of a mixed traffic constellation even when more than one unmanned aircraft are involved in aerodrome operations at the same time. Unfortunately, due to a lack of international standardization and regulation, it is still unknown which abilities a commercial unmanned aircraft will have. This makes it very difficult to define operational procedures. In the frame of the SESAR 2020 project 'Surface Management Operations' (SuMO), a procedural concept for ground movements of unmanned aircraft together with manned aircraft was elaborated. This concept uses so called segmented standard taxi routes and aims at realizing mixed traffic with an equal level of safety compared to pure manned traffic as well as very low system requirements for unmanned aircraft systems. In November 2017, this concept was validated together with tower controllers, conventional pilots, remotely piloted aircraft operators and an air traffic management expert from the German Air Navigation Service Provider DFS in a gaming workshop over several days. The validation covered departures, arrivals and non-nominal situations like C2 link loss or lost communication. Results showed that this concept likely allows a fast and easy integration of unmanned aircraft systems. It was rated as very practical, realistic and acceptable in terms of safety, human performance and the key performance areas access and equity as well as interoperability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.