Virtual Reality-based ATS workstation: Location-independent, cheaper than conventional Remote Tower Centers, the gapfiller solution even for the smallest airports!
Remote towers are already in operation and more and more remote tower centers (RTCs) are becoming available worldwide. Air traffic controllers are no longer tied to the location of the airport for which they provide ATC services. Researchers at DLR Institute of Flight Control are now taking things a step further: With the "Virtual Tower", the entire controller working position – including the view from the tower and all necessary systems – is transferred to a virtual environment.
Transforming Remote Towers to Virtual Towers
DLR researchers are developing a Virtual Tower concept that provides a remote tower controller working position wirelessly, anywhere, using standard and affordable virtual reality glasses. With this system, air traffic controllers are no longer tied to a physical tower. With internet access, controllers and aerodrome flight information service officers (AFISOs) could provide air traffic services wherever and whenever needed, whether in a remote tower centre, at home, or across borders.
Advantages for smaller airports and flight operations
A Virtual Tower setup can offer controllers many advantages in their daily operations, especially at smaller airports:
Location-Independent ATC: The advantages of different time zones could be exploited. For example, during the day at Lisbon Airport, a controller can take over the night-time air traffic control duties from Melbourne Airport, thereby avoiding the need for unpleasant night-time shifts in Melbourne. A controller could also manage the sole night flight at their airport from home, meaning they do not have to drive to the ATC tower in the middle of the night.
Flexible & Scalable Operations: Airports can scale their services according to demand and share resources across multiple locations. At airports with aerodrome flight information services, higher ATC services can be provided as needed by simply calling a colleague controller, who can then take over the flight in question. In an emergency, a controller can request assistance from another controller, who will connect virtually.
Enhanced Service Availability: At low-density airports, aerodrome flight information service officers (AFISOs) could share shifts with other officers to extend these airports' opening hours during off-peak periods.
Virtual Tower Operations
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Low hardware and infrastructure requirements and costs
Airport operators no longer have to worry about maintaining a tower building or even CWP hardware, because there is no longer any CWP hardware except for the glasses. This makes the user interface easy to harmonise across all units. Interface adaptations or software updates can be installed on all the glasses at the same time and the controllers always have the same user interface, regardless of which airport they are at.
The hardware and infrastructure requirements are extremely low: The Virtual Tower concept consists of a basic video panorama using low-cost camera sensors, a standard state-of-the-art pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera, a processing computer and a virtual reality environment (VR headset). The VR headset is used to display the video panorama and PTZ streams, to control the PTZ camera via a head tracking function and to provide radio communication, airport ambient sound and all necessary human-machine interactions, such as: electronic flight processing system, weather, communication or light panel systems. And all of this with very low hardware costs (less than 15,000 euros) and very low bandwidth requirements, which can even be transmitted using mobile phone networks.
The Virtual Tower concept has the potential to boost the economic viability of small and regional airports in particular and make their operations more sustainable.
The Virtual Tower concept relies on a cost-effective camera setup
The Virtual Tower concept is based on the Remote Tower idea first formulated by DLR in 2002 during a brainstorming session on blue sky technologies. The idea received an innovation award and in 2005, the world’s first remote-tower prototype was employed by DLR at Braunschweig-Wolfsburg Airport to test the concept’s technical and operational feasibility. Several national and international research and development activities followed and numerous ANSPs, such as the Swedish ANSP LFV and the German ANSP DFS, expressed their interest and collaborated with DLR. In 2014, DLR licensed the technology to the industry and in 2015, the first remote-tower installation went operational in Sweden, providing control of Örnsköldsvik airport from Sundsvall. In December 2018, the DFS went operational with Saarbrücken Airport, its first remotely controlled airport out of the Remote Tower Center in Leipzig.
DLR has played a major role in the development of Remote Tower since the original idea and the first prototype. Numerous research activities helped the aviation industry to realise the concept in an exceptionally short time period.
DLR coordinated the largest Remote Tower projects in the SESAR 2020 program and is driving standardization within the EUROCAE organization.
