Visibility of a remotely controlled airfield from a virtual visual control room

摘要

Remote control of airports implies application of cameras to replace direct visual observation from airport control towers by projection of the airport and its traffic in a remote control center. Remote airport control is an emerging technique with mainly benefits for smaller airports because it reduces the cost of personnel. Surprisingly, hardly any literature can be found to list the required visual objects and phenomena for tower control, i.e. the visual cues that need to be seen after projection in a virtual control room. The composition and validation of the so-called visual feature list for tower control is the subject of this paper. Tower controller task analysis is used to compose a ‘long-list' of visual features. The long-list has been presented to a group of operational air traffic controllers to test the need and the circumstances to observe these visual objects and phenomena. Analysis shows that most of the visual features are useful for operational tower control but are not strictly mandatory for applying the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization. The use of cameras and projection systems gives way to improve the surveillance by applying visual enhancement techniques. The requirement for visual image resolution of remote tower control is the second subject of the paper. The analysis leads to the definition of a ‘shortlist' of important safety-related visual objects and phenomena for tower control and the conclusion that state of the art media are just able to provide the required image resolution for visual detection but not for recognition.