How Digital Towers and AI can Redefine the Future of Airport Air Traffic Management

Aerospace and Defense Review | Saturday, January 28, 2023

AI, machine learning, and digital tower applications will help ATM workers focus on decision-making and performance by automating repetitive chores.

FREMONT, CA: Aviation industry professionals are trying to cut through the hype and examine real, practical ways of using disruptive technologies to help transform the aviation industry soon. Our world drastically altered a manner that none of us could have foreseen nearly a few years later. Even now, when the economic recovery is still so shaky due to the COVID-19 pandemic, talk of investing in what is commonly considered a dangerous new technology is further away than ever. Following are the Airport Air Traffic Management Leveraging digital towers and AI:

Leveraging AI to facilitate the return to sustainable growth: The revolutionary technologies surrounding the sector, AI, coupled with the ever-maturing application of digital tower concepts, is best positioned to enable the return of long-term development in terms of enhancing efficiency, safety, and resilience. Those concerns are relevant now and will be even more so tomorrow. By generating a more predictable operation regarding aircraft spacing and runway throughput, this capability can subsequently leverage to lessen the impact of external factors such as weather. The approach does not diminish the importance of people in the process; instead, it examines ways to optimize human performance.

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Reducing delays caused by weather: Before the pandemic, they initiated several initiatives to determine whether a combination of artificial intelligence and digital tower camera technology could reduce airport weather-related delays. When educated with sufficient data, they can safely recognize the precise moment an aircraft leaves the runway and then alert the controllers. The objective demonstrates that a tower like Heathrow's disappears into a low cloud despite the clear taxiway and runways. They could inform the controllers that the runway was available for the next arrival, thereby recouping the landing capacity lost under these conditions.

Automated voice clearances: The industry has experimented with automatic voice certifications, but the technical obstacles have always appeared insurmountable. Not only must a system be capable of issuing the clearance safely and accurately, but it must also be able to interpret the pilot's response and act accordingly. The ability to interpret ambiguity, which may include using non-standard phraseology or accented English (something humans are so good at), has always been the real technical obstacle to the idea taking off. Still, the unique nature of AI and machine learning has led to very encouraging results from non-operational trials.

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