Putting the Artificial into Intelligent Air Traffic Management Training
Your breathing and heartbeat are accelerating and your body temperature is rising. No 鈥 you鈥檙e not pedalling on an exercise bike being monitored by your Smart Watch. You鈥檙e being trained to become an Air Traffic Controller with Thales鈥 TopSky-SimDebrief, facing a screen with a huge number of virtual planes that you must manage. It鈥檚 so realistic that it helps you learn to deal with not only the mechanics but also the stress that you will face in your day-to-day activities.
And, aside from the trainer by your side, that big eye in the Cloud 鈥 Artificial Intelligence 鈥 is monitoring your every move, catching errors that would previously have gone unnoticed and could cause accidents in the real world. SimDebrief does not just monitor your use of ATM controls, but also tracks your physiological reactions -- where your eyes focus on the screen and the cadence of your voice in calls to virtual pilots. Acting as an 鈥渆lectronic instructor assistant鈥, AI is there to process all of this data, alerting the instructor about anything out of the ordinary and recording your performance to show you how you need to improve.
"This is how we can cope with the growing training needs stemming from the huge increase in air traffic while maintaining safety. We need to use AI-enhanced training to increase the efficiency of the training so we can get more controllers trained quickly and at reasonable cost." says Jean-Philippe Pinheiro, Manager of Thales' SkyCentre ATM Innovation Lab.
By leading the way with its expertise in the four pillars of digital transformation -- AI, Connectivity, Cybersecurity, and Big Data 鈥 Thales is ensuring that we can deal with the growth in complexity and volume in our airspace.