Air Traffic Control Automation
Automation systems for ATC's are very pivotal because they allow the Air Traffic Controller to focus on more important tasks at hand, and less about the smaller things. Automation are used to enhance communications with the pilots, get more accurate information at an earlier and more streamlined time, as well as enhancing full visibility of what is going on all around the airport at any given moment."Communication, navigation and surveillance tools help ATC controllers to fulfil their primary responsibility of preventing collisions between aircraft." (Baker, 2018). This helps in the human factor area in the job of ATC's, being that they aren't being stretched thin by such high workloads, and they have these systems that act as a live feed surveillance that they can see the whole view of the airport in real time, while also having radar tags on aircraft to make sure that everything is operating how it should be. These systems are also very pivotal when it comes to helping multiple aircraft taxi to and from the runways at night. They can use these systems to figure out the most optimal route for each aircraft to take while at the same time making sure that no two aircraft are headed down the same taxiway at the same time.
Reference:
Joe Baker, 2018. The Role of Automation in Air Traffic Control. Airport-Technology.com. Retrieved from: automation-air-traffic-control
Colby,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more that air traffic controllers have a very high workload. It is great to see all of this automation come together; I used to work at a company to optimize the ground traffic for these specific systems. I've heard some stressed-out controllers, and anything we can do to help them out would be significant. It would be excellent to see them focus on the task of preventing collisions.
Chris