Spanish Technology and consulting company Indra, has developed a revolutionary remote tower solution for air control, which offers unprecedented safety and efficiency levels during landing and take-off thanks to its use of artificial intelligence.
The new system enables savings that can be as high as 50%, since it eliminates expenses related to construction of a physical tower and it increases efficiency and operational use, mainly through work load balancing in “multi-airport” systems.
It is the first solution to incorporate artificial intelligence functions to execute critical air control processes without any need for human intervention. More specifically, the system employs advanced Deep Learning architectures that have been trained to carry out multiple operative tasks through autonomous machine vision. It is capable of detecting any operational anomalies in the aircraft’s configuration to report them to the operator. If, for example, the plane’s landing gear is not deployed or if its flaps are not properly open before take-off, the controller is alerted immediately.
In the same way, the system can identify and follow any moving aircraft, vehicle or person autonomously. It monitors the areas of greater interest more closely, alerting to the presence of unauthorized vehicles, people, animals, birds, and even drones that may represent a security risk.
Indra’s remote tower solution is complemented by the company’s ARMS anti-drone system, which can selectively neutralize any UAV. This solution has been implemented to avoid any recurrence of situations such as the ones in December 2018 in Gatwick and Heathrow.
The new solution arises as the result of Indra’s long accumulated experience in developing these solutions.
For the first time in the history of aviation, the company, – together with Avinor, the Norwegian navigation services supplier, and the Kongsberg company- has made it possible for a commercial aircraft to land at an airport with the help of controllers who were hundreds of kilometers away.
This milestone was achieved on October 19, 2019, when a passenger plane requested permission to land at Rost Island airport from the Bodo control tower, which is located on Norway’s mainland.
The controllers supervised the landing maneuver and remotely provided the instructions to land safely.
