Remote control of airports

VICTOR was a project conducted on behalf of the German Air Navigation Service Provider DFS within the Lufo IV research programme innovative AirPort (iPort for short). In cooperation with the project partners, we dealt with the development of a new air traffic controller workplace from a Human Factors perspective.

Located in the iPort sub-project 3: Taxiway Guidance, VICTOR aimed to develop a location and external view-independent air traffic controller workstation for monitoring and controlling one or more regional airfields. In this way, the research project addressed the national and international efforts to meet the growing air traffic with innovative air traffic control concepts.

The focus of the work was on the design of a location-independent (synthetic) external view and the evaluation of an associated new operating concept.

In a user-centred, iterative work process, we developed prototypes for this concept and evaluated them in collaboration with air traffic controllers. The basis for the requirements analysis and the investigations was a detailed recording of air traffic controller activities in the form of in-situ observations, which we conducted at three regional airports.

Requirements for the new workplace and the design of the external view were drawn from the activity analyses. These requirements resulted in a design proposal for a new controller workstation, which was discussed and revised in a workshop with controllers. Parallel to this, a laboratory study to test the new operating concept was conducted in cooperation with the Technische Universität Berlin.