Virtual and Remote Control Tower: Research, Design, Development, Validation, and Implementation

This book presents the interdisciplinary and international “Virtual and Remote Tower” research and development work. It has been carried out since nearly twenty years with the goal of replacing the conventional aerodrome control tower by a new “Remote Tower Operation” (RTO) work environment for enhancing work efficiency and safety and reducing cost. The revolutionary human–system interface replaces the out-of-windows view by an augmented vision video panorama that allows for remote aerodrome traffic control without a physical tower building. It enables the establishment of a (multiple) remote control center (MRTO, RTC) that may serve several airports from a central location. The first (2016) edition of this book covered all aspects from preconditions over basic research and prototype development to initial validation experiments with field testing. Co-edited and -authored by DLR RTO-team members Dr. Anne Papenfuss and Jörn Jakobi, this second extended edition with nearly doubled numberof chapters includes further important aspects of the international follow-up work towards the RTO-deployment. Focus of the extension with new contributions from ENRI/Japan and IAA/Dublin with Cranfield University, is on MRTO, workload, implementation, and standardization. Specifically, the two revised and nine new Chapters put the focus on inclusion of augmented vision and virtual reality technologies, human-in-the-loop simulation for quantifying workload and deriving minimum (technical) requirements according to standards of the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE), and MRTO implementation and certification. Basics of optical / video design, workload measures, and advanced psychophysical data analysis are presented in four appendices.

Dr. Norbert Fürstenau received his PhD from Frankfurt University in 1981 with a work on Laser Micro Mass Analysis in Biophysics. After post-doc research on laser induced cluster molecules, he served as research associate at DLR Inst. of Flight Guidance, until 2000 as group leader of photonic sensors research, then started the “Virtual Tower” research in the Human Factors division, and served as head of Remote Tower projects in 2002-2012. In 2016 he retired and continued research as scientific consultant. He has published more than 100 journal and conference papers in different research fields, and 10 patents (including “Virtual Tower”). He won the DLR’s 1st Visionary Projects competition (2001: Virtual Tower) and the Manfred-Fuchs Innovation award (2019, together with J. Jakobi). 

Dr. Anne Papenfuss is researcher at the Human Factors department of DLRs Institute of Flight Guidance since 2008. Her research field is teamwork in air traffic management, how it can be assessed and measured, with a focus on automating communication analysis. Within DLR’s research on remote tower, she organized the first simulation studies for remote tower and remote tower center operations to assess the impact of these concepts on human performance.

Jörn Jakobi (Dipl. Psych.) works as a human factors expert with DLR Institute of Flight Guidance in the domain of airport airside traffic management, with a particular focus on concept design and validation of A-SMGCS and Remote Tower systems, and in 2010 he took over the position of a business developer with main focus on the topic Remote Tower affairs. In 2014 he became chairman of the EUROCAE WG100 “Remote & Virtual Tower”, and in 2016 the Single European Sky ATM Research program (SESAR2020) launched the biggest European Remote Tower Project, which since then is managed by him as project coordinator. In 2019 he received the Manfred-Fuchs Innovation award for his achievements with Remote Tower innovations and implementations.