Flight-Deck Interface for High-Precision Taxi Control

Faced with ever-increasing projections of air traffic, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been developing advanced technologies to increase traffic-handling capacity at existing airports. Efforts to increase airport capacity approach the problem on two fronts: the first is to increase the number of runways (i.e. more usable space), and the second is to develop new technologies to achieve reduction in aircraft separation and consequently increase in landing rate per runway (i.e. higher density). Although increasing usable runways is ultimately inevitable, doing so often imposes new technical problems that compromise efficiency and safety. Modifying an existing airport layout increases surface traffic complexity with a higher level of aircraft and surface vehicle traffic, resulting in increased occurrences of runway crossing. A previous NASA-funded research addresses the air traffic control needs for ground-control operations with the development of a Ground-Operation Situation Awareness and Flow Efficiency (GO-SAFE) system. A new Surface Operation Automation Research (SOAR) project explores the concept of collaborative automation between the GO-SAFE system and a Flight-deck Automation for Reliable Ground Operation (FARGO) system. The currently proposed effort will advance the interface technology to help the flight crew achieve the precise taxi control envisioned for the FARGO system.