A simulation of aircraft motion on the airport surface

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of a real-time simulation of aircraft motion on the ground at airports. The aircraft Ground Motion Simulator (GMS) is designed to realistically simulate tower, ground, and apron aircraft control. The simulation includes high-fidelity graphic views, in color, of airport ground activity. It simulates air traffic operations in real time for all stages of flight from take-off to landing as well as all phases of ground movement of aircraft including landing roll, taxiing, yielding, platooning, parking, pushback, and takeoff roll. The capability to simulate aircraft movement on airport taxiways and runways provides a realistic environment for testing the planning processes regarding the management of departing traffic and its interactions with aircraft landing at an airport. The GMS simulates the environment at any arbitrary airport and interfaces through a fast, two way data communications link to an existing Air Traffic Control simulation facility. The GMS consists of a host computer workstation, an experimenter's station, one or more traffic controller stations, and one or more pseudopilot stations. The graphical user interface and the graphical displays were developed in object-oriented C on the X/Windows graphics system on UNIX workstations.