Can AI Replace Air Traffic Controllers?
James Kuchar, an assistant head of the Homeland Protection and Air Traffic Control Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, talked to Scientific American about artificial intelligence and air traffic control. Adrienne Bernhard writes:
AI might also improve the Traffic Alert and Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS), a warning system used on aircraft throughout the world that tells pilots when to climb or descend. "TCAS is extremely successful but also very rigid," says Kuchar. "The system is safe but tends to give false alarms" to pilots and ATC workers when planes fly close together, Kuchar says, "which they do more often now than when it was designed in the 1980s." Airborne Collision Avoidance System X (ACAS X), the upgraded system being tested at Lincoln, is informed by AI and has been run through millions of simulated near misses. One goal of ACAS X is in fact to reduce false alarms. It can also warn planes to move laterally in the sky; TCAS can only direct planes to descend or climb.