Don Nolan-Proxmire

Headquarters, Washington, DC October 17, 1996

(Phone: 202/358-1983)

Michael Mewhinney
Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA
(Phone: 415/604-3937)

RELEASE: 96-211

NASA TECHNOLOGY TO HELP PILOTS TAXI MORE EFFICIENTLY

Faced with a projected 32 percent increase in air traffic in

the United States over the next decade, NASA and the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) are developing advanced technologies to increase
traffic-handling capacity at existing airports.

One of those technologies is called the Taxiway Navigation And

Situation Awareness (T-NASA) system that will help pilots taxi safely
-- particularly in low visibility weather conditions. The integrated
system was developed as part of NASA's $100 million Terminal Area
Productivity (TAP) program and is being tested at NASA's Ames Research
Center, Mountain View, CA.

"For the pilot, taxiing at an airport today is done in the same

basic manner as it was in the 1950's -- receiving a verbal route
clearance, and then following the airport signs," said Ames scientist
Dr. David Foyle, technical leader of the T-NASA research development
team. "Despite the technological boom in avionics, GPS satellite
positioning technology and advanced display media, the only cockpit aid
currently available to the taxiing pilot is a paper airport layout
chart," Foyle said.

"T-NASA's goal is to safely get the aircraft from the gate to

the runway and from the runway to the gate as rapidly and efficiently
as we can," explains Dr. Robert McCann, who along with Foyle, Dr.
Anthony Andre, Dr. Durand Begault and Dr. Elizabeth Wenzel, has been
developing and testing T-NASA since 1993.

T-NASA is a combination of software and navigational devices

designed to operate on the aircraft's flight deck. Unlike some of the
other air traffic management tools now being tested by NASA and the
FAA, T-NASA is not automated, so pilots will continue to manually
control taxi maneuvers.

"There are other efforts to improve airport landing efficiency

in low-visibility conditions due to bad weather, but without new
displays and procedures for taxi, we feel that taxi operations may
produce an airport traffic bottleneck," Foyle said. "Airport taxiing
is extremely difficult in low-visibility weather conditions at
unfamiliar airports, and at large, complex airports."

"T-NASA is a cockpit display system with three components,"

Foyle said. "The cleared taxi route is shown on a glass visor in front
of the cockpit windshield, a Heads-Up Display (HUD), in a virtual
reality manner. The pilot's aircraft position and that of other
aircraft is shown on an electronic moving map of the airport on the
instrument panel. Traffic warnings are produced via virtual 3-D audio
techniques in which the warning sounds like it emanates from
the direction of the traffic," Foyle said.

"By using GPS satellite positioning and an airport layout

database, T-NASA updates the displays in real time," McCann said. "The
HUD depicts the edges of the taxiway with a series of virtual `cones'.
In addition, when there's a turn, we have virtual turn signs showing
the angle and direction of the turn. As the pilot taxis, these virtual
cones and signs move and change as if they were actual objects on the
taxiway. The pilot's cleared route ends up looking like a virtual
highway on the ground," McCann said.

"As the amount of traffic in the air increases, airline

schedules become tighter and more intertwined," McCann said. "If there
is bad weather at a major airport, there are tremendous disruptions on
the schedules as backups occur. If we can increase the efficiency of
airline surface operations so that planes are able to get very
efficiently from the runway to the gate and from the gate to the
runway, then we can impact the airline schedules and reduce delays. I
think that's the bottom line for the taxpaying public."

Foyle predicted the new technology will lead not only to

greater efficiency of operations, but to increased safety as well.

"Psychologists have shown that navigating with paper maps is a

very difficult and demanding mental task," Foyle noted. "Our
technology makes taxiing much easier for the pilot, particular under
low visibility conditions. The HUD and the moving map shows the
cleared taxi route to the pilot, and decreases the chance that the
pilot goes off route and becomes a hazard to other aircraft. The
moving map and virtual 3-D audio warnings provide pilots with better
knowledge of where other aircraft traffic are on the airport surface,"
he said.

"The T-NASA system has strong potential for automobiles as

well," McCann said. "For example, if we could adapt a T-NASA system
for automobiles, we might be able to prevent accidents involving
drivers going off the road during heavy fog, rain or snowstorms."

Foyle and McCann will discuss the T-NASA project Oct. 23 during
the 1996 World Aviation Congress and Exposition being held Oct. 22-24
at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles.

Next summer, Ames and NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton,

VA, are scheduled to conduct a flight demonstration of some of the TAP
components, including the T-NASA navigation system, at Atlanta's
Hartsfield International Airport. Ames also plans a full mission
simulation of T-NASA next year in its Crew Vehicle Systems Research
Facility.

-end-