Modern trainers on the way for USAF traffic controllers.

• Author: Sheehy, Christian B.

A new training system for U.S. Air Force air-traffic controllers will help reduce procedural errors and expedite student qualification, said industry and military officials.

The service will spend up to $72.5 million on 94 simulators.

The so-called tower simulation system is designed to improve voice command features and increase automation. Current technology relies on pseudo-pilot mediation between controller and aircraft. The new trainer's voice recognition technology proposes to eliminate a reliance on potentially fallible person-to-person communication links in favor of more streamlined, code-structured operations.

A growing demand for qualified air-traffic controllers is driving the Air Force to employ fully automated ATC simulation systems capable of preparing controllers to handle any airframe, at any location, under any conditions.

Regular adjustments to on-base air-wing strength--to meet changing readiness requirement--has presented challenges in maintaining sufficient levels of qualified controllers without available simulation technology on site, officials said. There is an excessively large time gap, these officials said, between initial technical schooling and actual field qualification.

Without the capability to train seamlessly from school to flight line, qualification time and safety risks are increased, as controllers can train only periodically, relying on real, as opposed to simulated, air traffic, explained Thomas L. Harris III, program manager for the tower simulation system at the Air Force Training Systems Product Group, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio.

"The key is to provide a physical interface, complete with real-time sensory cues, that will ensure an ongoing training environment without the need for live air traffic," he told National Defense. "This system will provide students with their own airspace' to gain proficiency and certification on multiple types of airframes in multiple types of scenarios."

The trainer's manufacturer is Adacel Systems Inc., in Montreal, Canada--a subsidiary of Adacel Technologies Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia.

Using voice recognition technology in place of current pseudo-pilot methodology, the simulator will enable student air-traffic controllers to hone their skills without the supervisory or location-specific requirements of live traffic training. Substituting software technology for human mediation between controller and aircraft, the system is expected to speed up the time necessary to qualify student controllers--in a simulation-based environment capable of replicating any live traffic scenario.

"With the current reliance on a controller to pseudo-pilot link in live and simulated air traffic scenarios, the potential for procedural error caused by human-to-human miscommunication is real," said Gary Pearson, program director for ATC tower simulation technology at Adacel. "With voice recognition, we remove the need for a continuous human presence, and thus human error, through the integration of a sound processing system that can interpret a command much faster and more precisely than the human ear."

In the system's...