Virtual and Remote Control Tower: Research, Design, Development and Validation (Research Topics in Aerospace)

The interdisciplinary research and development work carried out in the last ten years which is presented in this book aimed at replacing the conventional airport control tower by a new “remote tower operation” work environment (RTO) which should enhance work efficiency and safety and reduce costs. This revolutionary human–system interface allows for remote aerodrome traffic control without a physical tower building and enables the establishment of remote airport traffic control centers (RTC) of which each may serve several airports from a central location.

Dr. phil.-nat. NorbertFürstenau, Dipl. Physiker, studiedphysics from 1971 to 1978 at Universities of Braunschweig, Darmstadt andFrankfurt. In 1977 he received the Diplom Physiker degree from the Inst. of  Nuclear Physics of TU-Darmstadt and in 1981the Dr. phil.-nat. degree from Frankfurt University for research on Laserapplications in Biophysics. In his dissertation he investigated the generationof large molecular clusters (predecessors of Carbon Buckeyballs) through Laser evaporationin a micro mass analyser, and his interest started in the emerging topic ofcomplex systems and Synergetics. After a short period as a post-doc researcherincluding teaching tasks at the Institute of Medical Physics / Biophysics, he accepteda permanent position at the DLR Inst. of Flight Guidance in Braunschweig in 1981.Starting with research in inertial navigation and Laser gyro technology, he initializedin 1984 the Fiber Optic Sensors research as group leader at the Department of InertialNavigation / Measurement Technologies. The main focus was directed to fiberoptics based interferometric micro sensors and methods for structuralmonitoring (so called fiber optic smart structures).  During these years numerous research visitsand international cooperations with laboratories in Canada, Korea, andRussia  resulted in a large number ofconference and journal publications.

After theresearch focus of the Inst. of Fligt Guidance had turned more and more awayfrom aircraft towards air traffic, the research in measurement technologiesgradually ended and in 1999 the editor joined the Human Factors Department wherehe started the “Virtual Tower” concept study (2002–2004), after winning a firstprize within DLR’s first “Visionary Projects” competition, endowed with an initialresearch grant. He was project leader of DLR’s “Remote Airport Tower Operations”projects RApTOR (2005-2007) and RAiCe (Remote Airport Traffic Control Center,2008-2012). In 2010 he spent a research semester at NASA-Ames Advanced DisplaysLab.(working with Steve Ellis, author of the foreword and (co-) author of two bookchapters), preparing psychophysics experiments for Remote Towercharacterization. In 2011 the editor was again winner at the fifth DLR-VisionaryProjects competition. The proposal: “Extreme Events Prediction” received astarting grant that supported his growing interest in complex systems dynamics.In 2014 he joined the Controller Assistance department where he is currently responsiblefor DLR’s contribution to the European collaborative project “Robust-ATM” (2013– 2016) that addresses air traffic optimization under disturbance usingadvanced mathematical methods. His research interest had always aninterdisciplinary touch and is presently focused on nonlinear dynamics andmodeling of diverse complex systems including human perception (two recentjournal papers in “Biological Cybernetics” and “Cognitive Processing”) and airtraffic management under external stochastic disturbance. He is (co-) author ofca. 120 conference and journal papers and 17 patents. The Remote Tower patentwas recently licensed to a company for commercialisation, and it describes thebasics of an increasing number of installations worldwide, presently underoperational validation.