Air Traffic Control Automation Research
The Aviation Systems Division conducts research and development in two primary areas: air traffic management, and high-fidelity flight simulation. For air traffic management, researchers are creating and testing concepts to allow for up to three times today's level of aircraft in the national airspace. Automation and its attendant safety consequences are key foundations of the concept development. Historically, the division has developed products that have subsequently been implemented for the flying public, such as the Traffic Management Advisor, which is being deployed nationwide. For high-fidelity flight simulation, the division operates the world's largest flight simulator (the Vertical Motion Simulator), a Level-D 747-400 simulator, and a panoramic air traffic control tower simulator. These simulators have been used for a variety of purposes including continued training for Space Shuttle pilots, development of future spacecraft handling qualities, helicopter control system testing, Joint Strike Fighter evaluations, and accident investigations. Personnel in the division have a variety of technical backgrounds, including guidance and control, flight mechanics, flight simulation, and computer science. Customers outside of NASA have included the FAA, DOD, DHS, DOT, NTSB, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing
Read more about this topic: Ames Research Center
Famous quotes containing the words air, traffic, control, automation and/or research:
“Hamlet. The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.
Horatio. It is a nipping and an eager air.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.”
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
“America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)