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© Tami
Chappell / Reuters
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Ever
pictured landing in an airport with no human oversight? In an era when deadly
blunders still occur and hackers infiltrate well-secured environments, a
Swedish airport is testing an unmanned control tower. Operators say the
technology is safer.
Welcome
to Ornskoldsvik Airport in Sweden, where a lonely control tower with no one
inside guides planes down safely. This may appear scary at first –the person
controlling your landing is about 90 miles away, in another complex.
But
the science is cheaper and more advanced, experts say. “There is a lot of good
camera technology that can do things that the human eye can’t,” Pat Urbanke of
Searidge Technologies, the company behind the technology, told AP.
“We
understand that video is not real life, out the window. It’s a different way of
surveying,” he added.
The
human eye is a wondrous instrument – but can it see in the dark? How about fog
vision or thermal sensors? Or seeing and calculating all the possible blind
spots at once? What about taking care that animals or stray objects don’t
impede landing?
Not
all this technology functions at Ornskoldsvik yet, as there are still legal
hoops to jump through. But the airport is an important testing ground for the
technology, being within reach of Stockholm, as well as responsible for major
international destinations.
However,
the 80,000 annual passenger load just doesn’t qualify it for employing
full-time control staff – costing on average $175,000 for one controller. Now
multiply this by six, the necessary number of staff, and add additional costs
for maintenance, comfort facilities e.g. air conditioning, elevators, extra
space and manually-operated systems, and you’re faced with a much more
substantial bill.
The
technology, designed by Saab, started testing in April. Now a lone 80-foot
tower rises above the site, housing 14 high-definition cameras, transmitting
video to Sunvsal Aiport. The airport continues to pay salaries, as the system
is being tested. But in future, the idea is to build really small airports and
house all the controllers together in far-away facilities.
The
LVF Group, the team behind the navigation at 26 of Sweden’s airports, swears by
them. Computers are very quick at determining differences in the transmission
from a second before, issuing automatic alerts if something is picked up. The
company’s Niclas Gustavsson predicts that “eventually there will be no towers
built at all.”
The
cameras are supplemented by microphones to transmit the sound of planes. This
is still a human-operated system – and controllers instinctively grab their
binoculars to stare at the 55-inch screens transmitting the feeds.
"Without
the sound, the air traffic controllers felt very lost," said Anders Carp,
head of traffic management at Saab.
To
keep the cameras clean and clear of things such as insects and dust,
high-pressure wind is pumped over the windows. Testing for severe weather
conditions has also been performed – with temperatures as low as -22 and a
boiling 122 degrees Celsius pushing the cameras to the limit.
The
technology is no longer exclusive to Sweden. Saab continues to test the gadgets
and seek regulatory approval on a number of details. The company already has
plans for Norway and Australia.
The
US is set to become the next testing ground for the technology. Leesburg in Virginia
is in line, with an unmanned tower already in place. Trial runs started early
last month.
At the same time, Searidge
– a competitor, wants to build an unmanned tower for Hungary’s main airport, in
Budapest, which handles 8.5 million passengers a year. The company hopes to
have the tower up and running sometime in 2017.
Originally published in RT America
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