Southern New Jersey Professional Societies

Meeting Archive 2015 - 2016

Wednesday Oct 19, 2016

21st Century Challenges and Opportunities for Aviation Human Factors

viation is one of the core domains for human factors research and practice. Many of the basic theories and methods used by human factors professionals were developed and applied first in the aviation domain. However, as aviation expands and changes to include new types of vehicles (e.g., UASs), new missions and categories of operators (e.g., amateur UAS pilots), and involving new forms of technology and automation (e.g., autonomous vehicles), the field of human factors must adapt its methods and approaches as well. For example, traditional human factors focused on core topics such as communication, attention, and decision making. These topics still apply to the future aviation domain, but now may include communication with intelligent agents in addition to other humans, attention to new forms of displays and indicators (e.g., haptic alerts), and decisions supplemented by recommendation and modeling tools. Researchers and practitioners in human factors will need to expand their knowledge of theories and techniques associated with fields such as information visualization, artificial intelligence, robotics, and natural language understanding. In the presentation, I will talk about how these fields inter-relate and how human factors engineering can be expanded to incorporate these disparate knowledge domains.

Wednesday Sep 21, 2016

Flying Robots: Beyond UAVs

Dr. Kumar is a veteran TED Talk presenter (2012 – Robots that Fly and Cooperate) and will be presenting his work on Flying robots that can operate in three-dimensional, indoor and outdoor environments. However, many challenges arise as we scale down the size of the robot, which is necessary for operating in cluttered environments. I will describe recent work in developing small, autonomous robots, and the design and algorithmic challenges in the areas of (a) control and planning, (b) state estimation and mapping, and (c) coordinating large teams of robots. I will also discuss applications to search and rescue, first response and precision farming.

Wednesday May 18, 2016

Satellite Navigation: Past, Present, and Future

Mr. Wanner’s presentation will address the Global Position System (GPS), which is a worldwide utility that provides position and timing information to everyone. Since the advent of GPS, additional satellite navigation systems have been proposed and implemented. This topic explores how GPS works, the history of satellite navigation, how it is used today, and what the future holds for satellite navigation.

Wednesday April 20, 2016

A Critique of a Popular Aerodynamic Theory

Mr. Konyak will present “Lifting line theory” which is a popular, 100-year-old aerodynamic theory that establishes a relationship between wing lift and associated drag. It is suitably simple for introduction in an undergraduate aerodynamics course, its lift-drag force relationship correlates well with measured results, and every aerodynamics text teaches it. It is also used as the basis for empirical corrections in aircraft design manuals. However, its assumptions about the physical flow environment deviate from wind tunnel observations to the point that validation of the theory involves a leap of faith in which the ends justify the means. In his presentation, Mr. Konyak critiques the theory, illustrates why it has endured, and presents concepts for an alternate approach that retains the same useful force relationship while better matching the physical flow environment of wind tunnel observations.

Wednesday March 16, 2016

Biology Inspired Genetic Algorithm Implementation for Time-shifted Air Traffic Scenario Generation

Mr. Ritchie will present his recent work in developing a new implementation of a genetic algorithm using state-of-the-art object-oriented design techniques. A key area of this research is evaluation of ground automation supporting air traffic controllers, referred to as a conflict probe (CP). Effective testing of a CP requires conflicts between flights in a given air traffic scenario, which are generally not found in recorded traffic where flights have been maneuvered to maintain safe separation standards. However, the FAA has been successful in manipulating recorded air traffic scenarios to induce conflicts for CP testing by using a method of time-shifting. In this approach, flights in previously recorded data are shifted in time in order to induce conflicts. The method of determining these time-shift values is implemented as a genetic algorithm, which is a search heuristic that mimics the processes of biological evolution. An early implementation uses theories of survival of the fittest to calculate the time-shift values. Mr. Ritchie will present how the genetic algorithm works, its improvement, and results of recent experiments.

Wednesday February 17, 2016

Systems Engineering

Walt will provide an overview of systems engineering as captured in his books: Systems Practices as Common Sense and Systems Engineering Design Renaissance. The presentation will also include thoughts on systems education and the next generation.

Walt started his career with the FAA as an electrical engineering co-op student and upon graduating with a BSEE took a full time position supporting one of the “NAFEC” simulation labs. Eventually he found himself and his new family leaving the FAA and moving across the country to California, Florida, and back to New Jersey all while working on large complex systems with systems engineering as the common thread. Several years ago he was invited to University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University to offer some of his insights to the next generation. Walt now mixes education and work with systems engineering.

Wednesday January 20, 2016

Stockton Aviation Research and Technology Park and NJ UAS Test Site

Joseph M. Sheairs, Sr. is the Executive Director of the Stockton Aviation Research & Technology Park (SARTP) and the Associate Director for the New Jersey Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Test Site as part of the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership. As the lead for the SARTP, he is working to develop a world class, member-based research environment focused on the future of aviation in collaboration with the government, academia, and industry. As the lead for the NJ UASTS, he is focused the National Airspace System (NAS) side of UAS integration, ensuring the NAS continues to perform as safely and efficiently as it does today and providing a safe means for UAS to fly in the NAS.

Wednesday October 21, 2015

Death of the Dinosaurs, Birth of a Fossil Park

Wednesday September 16, 2015

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). It is a cryogenic infrared space observatory with a 25 m 2 aperture telescope that will extend humanities’ high angular resolution view of the universe into the infrared spectrum to reveal early epochs of the universe that the HST cannot see. The Webb’s science instrument payload includes four cryogenic near-infrared sensors that provide imagery, coronagraphy, and spectroscopy over the near- and mid-infrared spectrum. The JWST is being developed by NASA, in partnership with the European and Canadian Space Agencies, as a general user facility with science observations to be proposed by the international astronomical community in a manner similar to the HST. The Webb’s technology development and mission design are complete. Construction, integration and verification testing is underway in all areas of the program. The JWST is on schedule for launch during 2018.

Wednesday June 17, 2015

Web-Based Operational Evaluation of Aircraft Conflicts

The Human Factors Branch (ANG-E25) and Concept Analysis Branch (ANG-C41, supported by Spectrum Software Technology and General Dynamics Information Technology, are collaborating on a study of En Route controller conflict detection, using Web technology and "crowdsourcing" to obtain many more participants than could join a Human-in-the-Loop study. ANG-C41 has created air traffic samples to test the performance of Conflict Probe automation, which detects conflicts (losses of minimum separation) between aircraft in En Route airspace and presents strategic warnings to the controller. The study we describe, designed and analyzed by ANG-E25, presents a series of mini-scenarios taken from the test samples, each showing a pair of aircraft that may conflict. Controllers, participating from their own facilities via the Web, will decide whether they believe the aircraft will in fact conflict and indicate whether they would have wanted automation support for this decision. We will use data on their detection accuracy and efficiency, and their preference for automation help on each scenario, to create an operationally relevant scenario set for future testing of the automation, and to derive performance requirements for future Conflict Probe upgrades.

Wednesday May 20, 2015

Effects of Space Vehicle Operations on the National Airspace System: A Fast-Time Simulation Perspective

With the introduction of commercial space operators in the United States and internationally, the frequency of space vehicle operations are expected to greatly increase in the coming years. Ms. Kee, a FAA aerospace engineer, will present research conducted by the FAA’s Concept Analysis Branch utilizing its engineering and fast-time computer simulation capabilities to:

• assess the current day operational impacts of commercial space operations on the NAS,

• evaluate the potential effects of future commercial space operations on the NAS, and

• explore the mitigation of operational impacts for an example strategy developed by Stanford University’s Aerospace Design Lab.

Wednesday April 15, 2015

Is that a giant flock of birds? What you don’t want to see on Final Approach

The FAA estimates that wildlife strikes result in annual monetary losses to the USA civil aviation industry of $937 million. All too often bird strikes result in go-rounds, significant damage to aircraft, aircraft downtime, and loss of life. Airport biologists have effectively used avian radars to manage airport-based bird threats since 2007. The FAA subsequently initiated a concept to present improved radar-based bird location information to air traffic controllers. This presentation will characterize bird strike threats, the status of the FAA Wildlife Surveillance Concept, and recent congressional interest in investing additional FAA resources to deploy these technologies to reduce the frequency of strikes.

Wednesday March 18, 2015

Modeling and Simulation of Aircraft for ATC Systems at NASA Langley

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Airspace and Traffic Operations Laboratory (ATOL) houses a suite of complex high-fidelity Air Traffic Control and Aircraft simulation systems dedicated to the research and evaluation of advanced Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts and technologies in both current and NextGen environments. SGT is the primary developer, integrator, and operator of the ATOL simulation systems which model the Air Traffic Control infrastructure, single and dual-crew cockpits, transport and UAS vehicles, radio and data link communication, Navigation Performance, and ADS-B surveillance. ATOL interfaces with various other NASA facilities and external partners such as MITRE, FAA, and ERAU. Areas of research include Oceanic, Domestic En- Route, Terminal airspace, UAS, as well as Vertical Lift and Supersonic. This year, SGT and NASA started a new initiative called SmartNAS to enable cloud-based operations of the ATOL simulation systems.

Wednesday January 21, 2015

Aviation Research Activities at Rutgers

Dr. Farris will provide an overview of the Rutgers School of Engineering and its current slate of research activities including those related to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS).