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CSUN Research Focuses on Modernizing Air Transportation System

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Oct. 3, 2007) — "Flight delayed" is one of the most dreaded phrases for an air traveler. The problem is only expected to get worse as the congested skies get even more crowded.

"It is projected that passenger air traffic will double by 2025," said Cal State Northridge assistant mechanical engineering professor Nhut Ho. "The system will go into gridlock if we don’t do anything about it."

In an effort to address the problem, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded $3 million to a consortium of universities, including Northridge, and the Boeing Co. It is charged with figuring out how to accommodate the increase in air traffic without building more airports. Funded through the Federal Aviation Agency’s (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System initiative, CSUN has received a grant of $277,500 over four years through 2010.

At CSUN, Ho, the project lead, and part-time psychology professor Barry Berson are working with engineering and human factors students on a project intended to expand the capacity of existing airports, like Los Angeles International Airport, by using technology to manage more aircraft in the same airspace, and to do a better job of moving traffic faster in and out of the airport by allowing planes to land and take off quicker and closer together.

ÄA lot of the separation standards and requirements are based on the technology of the ‘60s," Ho said.

He and Berson are working on research designed to allow pilots to manage their own tactical separation from other aircraft—instead of relying on air traffic controllers—by using airborne and ground-based automated decision-aid tools to detect and resolve conflicts created when planes share the same air space and runways.

"Automation is going to predict where all these airplanes are going to be in the airspace, and convey the information to the controller and pilot,Ú said Berson, who also works on cockpit design for Lockheed Martin. "It may give you insight inside the cockpit that shows you the relationship between yourself, the pilot, and all the airplanes in the environment, the weather and other things that can affect flight management."

Another goal is to equip pilots and controllers with a greater awareness of their environment while also making them more collaborative and effective.

"The assumption that we have is that you have great shared situational awareness between pilots and controllers. You, the pilot, basically know what’s in your environment, and they, the controllers, know the intent of your aircraft and other aircraft. They should have less communication needs," Berson explained. "If you, the pilot, are not communicating, you have more time to get your aircraft from point A to B without colliding with anything else in the airspace."

To validate that assumption, Ho and Berson are developing a broad mathematical model that identifies the automation requirements and quantifies the cost and benefit of sharing more information between controllers and pilots, and having pilots responsible for tactical separation of aircraft and controllers responsible for strategic management of traffic flow. While Ho focuses on the engineering aspects of the research, Berson is concentrating on the human factors such as behavioral changes, and in design elements. They are also working on methods of measuring situational awareness, workload and performance.

To test the theories, experienced pilots and controllers will work at computers in the CSUN Systems Engineering Research Laboratory, which uses software from NASA to simulate real-life airspace and real-life air traffic. While pilots fly, controllers will manage the flow of air traffic in the simulated studies.

The results will be used to determine if pilots can take more responsibility for maintaining a safe distance from other aircraft, which would free controllers from minutely managing separation between planes, and give them extra time for other tasks.

Controllers need more time to get the job done as the volume of planes increases. When they don’t have enough time to handle all the aircraft, they must hold planes on the ground, sometimes for hours, before permitting take-offs, and also delay landings. Reducing those delays requires, in part, increasing the number of take-offs and landings permitted per hour.

Similar simulation studies are taking place, sometimes simultaneously at the labs of the collaborating universities, including Cal State Long Beach, which leads the consortium that includes CSUN, San Jose State, Purdue University and Boeing.

While pursuing the overall research goal of modernizing the air travel system to enlarge capacity in the sky and on the ground without sacrificing safety, increasing noise pollution or overworking pilots and controllers, Ho and Berson also share another mission: providing students with real-world experiences.

"In most classes, students are learning theory. We want to give them applied experience, help them build resumes, make them more marketable and expose them to contacts that lead to jobs," Berson said. Like the recent CSUN human factors grad, Ho added, who worked on the project as it began and was just offered a job at Lockheed.

"We want to use this experience to train students," said Ho, adding they also want to help the students mature as researchers, put them to work on real problems and when possible, send them to conferences to present their own work.

They also want their students to get paid while they get practical experience.

"Barry and I are firm believers that we ought to pay students for the work they do on this project," Ho said, explaining that when he getting his doctorate at M.I.T. he was supported by research assistance-ships. "It’s an alien concept at Cal State schools to a certain extent because we don’t have the research capability and most of our focus is on teaching."