Louisa Smith

This week I spokeatThe Journey Towards Autonomy in Civil Aerospaceevent organised by theAerospace TechnologyInstitute,addressingthe challengesoffully automating ATM.

We tend to thinkof autonomous things as beingabout self-driving cars or machines doing things withoutanyhuman input, but automationis somethingwe arenow becoming used to in our everyday lives. Fromour phones making suggestions for us,to ourTVs automatically recording shows it knows weve watched before.

Automationfor the aviation industryoffershugeopportunities,andhas the potential to open the skies to new airspace users and allow us to be more flexible and agile in the servicesweprovide.Italso poses somechallenges, and there are three that I think will needto be considered above allothers.

The firstis safety. Safety for NATSis what we do,every second of every day.Our role is to safelymove aircraft from one place to anotheras efficiently as we can. The safety of thousands of flightscarrying hundreds of thousands of peopleevery single day lies with us. To ensure that safety,layersupon layers of mechanisms and proceduresareembedded intowhat we do.

Automation can bring with it the opportunity tofurtherimprove safety levels. And its alreadyin our operation. The big jumpfor the futurewill befrom controllersmaking the decisions withtools to support them.to the technologymaking the decision withouta human tocheck and thenaccept the solution.

A lot of time we compare the automation of the aviation industry with that of autonomous cars,but in reality, thesafety levels within the two industries are not comparable.We needeven more stringent acceptance criteria.Approximately27,000 people are killed or seriously injured in car related accidents every year in the UK alone thatsthe same number of people it would take to fill 180 AirbusA320s.In2019, there wereapprox. 257 commercial aviation fatalitiesanywhere inthe world.The level of safety assurance that will be required to implement any automation will need to reflect that additional safety level.

This leads onto the second challenge:complexity. Airspace is complex and the way we manage itrequires skill and judgement.It takes aroundthreeyears to train as an air traffic controller, after ataxingselection process. The reason the human brain is so good at problem solving in this environment is because it can process a lot of information, butimportantly, it canalsodeal withambiguity.A machinecanmanagea lot more information, butnotambiguity. How do we ensure it can deal with a new scenarioit has never seen before?How does a machine ensure the answer it createsis safe and efficient?It needs to be correct,100%of the time.

Another complexity is our neighbours,weareworkingwithEuropean partnersto harmonise air traffic managementbutif the UK had a fully autonomousATMsystem,andour neighbouring ANSPs didntit wouldmake the interface more than a bit tricky.

Thethird challenge is the human acceptance of automation whether thatsthe travelling passengers, pilots or regulators. If the human doesnttrust the technology, then we may never see it reach its full potential.Acceptancebythepassenger is important, but as we progress along the automation journey in the ATM environment, the trust between controllers and technology is essential, and that is why they are integral to the development of these technology and systems.

The hit ofCOVID-19hasreally demonstrated the impact on the industryofexternal factors, and how we must remain adaptable and flexible.Atechnical solution today may be obsolete in a few years.Butwe know automation does and will play an increasing role in supporting our controllers in providing the safest and most efficient service to aircraft flying through our airspace.

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NATS - The challenges of fully automating air traffic management - sUAS News