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Can AI-Controlled Cameras Replace An Air Traffic Control Tower? (bloomberg.com)
London's Heathrow airport is testing a surprising new system involving high-definition cameras, monitoring 50,000 arrivals in the month of March. Bloomberg reports:
Views from the cameras will be fed into an artificial intelligence platform from Canada's Searidge Technologies Inc. that will interpret the images and reveal to controllers when a particular aircraft has cleared the runway, allowing them to clear the next flight to come in to land... If successful, the system will initially be deployed when Heathrow's 285-foot control tower is shrouded in cloud -- a situation that currently compels the airport to rely on radar readings to determine the position of jets. That in turn requires a bigger gap between flights, costing the hub nine landings an hour or 20 percent of the usual total...
The same technology could also control the airport's $22 billion third runway due to open for flights by 2025, removing the need to construct a new control tower to oversee the strip north and west of the existing one. The smaller London City airport is removing its tower altogether and deploying a mast with zoom cameras, allowing flights to be managed from the Swanwick control center more than 80 miles away.
The same technology could also control the airport's $22 billion third runway due to open for flights by 2025, removing the need to construct a new control tower to oversee the strip north and west of the existing one. The smaller London City airport is removing its tower altogether and deploying a mast with zoom cameras, allowing flights to be managed from the Swanwick control center more than 80 miles away.
Its for all the unusual things a computer might not have the ability to consider.
The wrong rate of climb in the wrong way.
Smoke and fire.
A plane might report its abandoning take off due to a mechanical problem.
The crew is unaware of a large fire and a lot of smoke.
Thats extra seconds to call for equipment.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Self flying / taxxing aircraft aren't that difficult a problem and they would interact well with automated air traffic control. As long as there are humans though, I think fully automated traffic control would be difficult. Instructions are still given by voice and they can be misunderstood and / or garbled etc.
Automation is also very poor at dealing with unusual situations - say a major earthquake at SFO that might have damaged runways, or a piece of debris falling off of a plane and creating a hazard, or a confused inexperienced (or sometimes experienced) pilot blundering into the wrong airspace. I think some humans will be needed to deal with these sorts of situations.
Answer: Yes.
If you still have humans in the loop, decisions will be delayed when seconds count, and the biggest mistakes will happen when the controllers are exhausted and confused.
The worst aircraft accident in history was the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster in the Canary Islands. 583 people died in a cascade of errors, miscommunication, and poor judgement calls, as exhausted controllers dealt with heavy fog, delayed flights, and frustrated pilots.
One pilot thought he had clearance to takeoff on a runway that another plane was given clearance to cross. Automated cameras would have detected this problem, and could have automatically ordered the planes to stop. This wouldn't even need AI. Just a dumb algorithm would have saved hundreds of lives.
I did not get that they are replacing controllers. They are providing additional tools and remote sensing. The system does not provide automated clearances to pilots as far as I understand it.
"Views from the cameras will be fed into an artificial intelligence platform from Canada’s Searidge Technologies Inc. that will interpret the images and reveal to controllers when a particular aircraft has cleared the runway, allowing them to clear the next flight to come in to land."