An ATM simulation environment for the development of HMI technologies

Current air traffic control and air traffic management systems are already working near their capacity limit. To meet future requirements resulting from an increase in air traffic worldwide, the development of new air traffic management concepts and technologies is needed. Validation and evaluation is a major part during the development process of new systems in order to ensure their suitability for real operation conditions. Simulation is a commonly used approach for testing and evaluating new technologies. This paper presents a modular aviation simulation environment at the Institute of Flight Guidance of the Technische Universitaet Braunschweig. The environment comprises two aircraft cockpit simulators, an air traffic controller working position and an airport traffic simulator. It is primarily used for the development of future augmentation systems including new human machine interface technologies. A software development framework is introduced that simplifies the communication between individual simulation modules as well as the integration of applications. Moreover, the paper presents two software projects that were developed within the scope of research activities and integrated into the simulation environment using the software framework. The first project deals with a concept of the visual presentation of wake vortex hazard zones in flight to improve the flight crew's situational awareness. The second one describes an onboard airport navigation application supporting the pilots during ground movement operations on aerodrome surfaces.