{"id":473961,"date":"2024-04-23T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?p=473961"},"modified":"2024-04-23T06:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T04:30:00","slug":"how-a-physicist-helps-organise-our-ever-busier-airspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/how-a-physicist-helps-organise-our-ever-busier-airspace\/","title":{"rendered":"How a physicist helps organise our ever-busier airspace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are going to be major changes in the airspace over the coming years. It is getting busier and busier up there and more and more different types of traffic are encountering each other. The big question is therefore how to keep all those different traffic flows \u2013 drones and aircraft, manned and unmanned, fast and slow \u2013 apart safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to organise the airspace as flexibly as possible for various users,\u201d says J\u00fcrgen Teutsch, a senior R&D engineer at the Air Traffic Management and Airport department of the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR). That department is involved in air traffic control and the organisational structure of airspace. Organising the lower reaches of the airspace currently uses \u2018visual flight rules\u2019 which \u2013 simply put \u2013 mean that pilots try to maintain a distance from any other craft that they see. When the airspace gets busier and more flight movements by a wide variety of craft are happening in it, that is no longer enough. So there\u2019s work to be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why this is important: <\/h2>

Significant changes are anticipated in airspace in the upcoming years. With increasing congestion and diverse traffic types, including drones and aircraft, manned and unmanned, fast and slow, the key concern revolves around safely segregating these traffic flows. That is exactly what J\u00fcrgen Teutsch is working on. <\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\u2019re moving towards new forms of airborne traffic\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One example the researcher gives is urban air mobility. As well as drones, that also covers manned electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft \u2013 an electric helicopter used as an air taxi, for instance. That may sound pretty fanciful, but several companies in the United States are on the verge of scaling up production of such vehicles. \u201cThese companies all have a vision that involves certifying their air taxis, scaling up production and adapting to new regulations. Once there are a hundred vehicles like these flying in New York, it won\u2019t take long for the airspace to get crowded. In the Netherlands too, we\u2019re moving towards new forms of airborne traffic, which means that the airspace will be more crowded. So we\u2019ve got to think carefully about how it\u2019s going to be organised.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J\u00fcrgen\u2019s work focuses on validating concepts for using new technology and new systems in a variety of environments. \u201cTake integrating drones, for instance, that have to be integrated from a long way away into the arrival flows of a regional airport. We can test and validate this concept in a highly realistic simulated environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
J\u00fcrgen Teutsch <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A fascination with the unknown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

J\u00fcrgen\u2019s fascination with aviation goes back to the early seventies when a spacecraft was put into orbit around Mars for the first time. J\u00fcrgen had just learned to read and he devoured every scrap of information he could find about it. That fascination never waned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his master\u2019s in Space Technology and Mechanical Engineering, he started work as a researcher at Delft University of Technology\u2019s faculty of Aerospace Technology. After a couple of detours, he ended up with Airbus as a systems administrator. It didn\u2019t take him long to decide that he needed to go back into research. When he saw an advert for NLR in passing, he picked up the phone straight away. His enthusiasm was reciprocated and J\u00fcrgen moved permanently from his country of birth to the Netherlands in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making the invisible visible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Close on twenty-five years later, J\u00fcrgen is still working at NLR. Another important part of his research, in addition to how to organise airspace, is improving the working conditions for air traffic controllers through new technology. A key role in this is played inter alia<\/em> by augmented reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuppose you\u2019re an air traffic controller and you\u2019re on the tower work floor. You have to split your attention between what\u2019s happening at the airport and the digital information that\u2019s arriving. It would then be very efficient if you could use a HoloLens [augmented reality headset, ed.]<\/em> to see extra information or even projected camera images while you\u2019re looking outside. The headset can also let an air traffic controller see images of places that aren\u2019t easily visible from the tower. We\u2019re using technology to make the invisible visible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A fascination with the unknown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

J\u00fcrgen\u2019s fascination with aviation goes back to the early seventies when a spacecraft was put into orbit around Mars for the first time. J\u00fcrgen had just learned to read and he devoured every scrap of information he could find about it. That fascination never waned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his master\u2019s in Space Technology and Mechanical Engineering, he started work as a researcher at Delft University of Technology\u2019s faculty of Aerospace Technology. After a couple of detours, he ended up with Airbus as a systems administrator. It didn\u2019t take him long to decide that he needed to go back into research. When he saw an advert for NLR in passing, he picked up the phone straight away. His enthusiasm was reciprocated and J\u00fcrgen moved permanently from his country of birth to the Netherlands in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>
<\/div><\/div>
Using data to comply with noise standards and regulations<\/div>
When Ellen van Leeuwen started as a data analyst at the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) at age twenty-one, she and the secretary were the only women. <\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Making the invisible visible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Close on twenty-five years later, J\u00fcrgen is still working at NLR. Another important part of his research, in addition to how to organise airspace, is improving the working conditions for air traffic controllers through new technology. A key role in this is played inter alia<\/em> by augmented reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuppose you\u2019re an air traffic controller and you\u2019re on the tower work floor. You have to split your attention between what\u2019s happening at the airport and the digital information that\u2019s arriving. It would then be very efficient if you could use a HoloLens [augmented reality headset, ed.]<\/em> to see extra information or even projected camera images while you\u2019re looking outside. The headset can also let an air traffic controller see images of places that aren\u2019t easily visible from the tower. We\u2019re using technology to make the invisible visible.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

J\u00fcrgen also helped develop a tool for go-around detection. That\u2019s aviation jargon: a go-around situation is what happens when a pilot is unable to land, for instance because the landing runway isn\u2019t clear or because of high side winds. In the ideal situation, the pilot reports this immediately to air traffic control, but that is often not the case in practice \u2013 after all, it is an urgent and often stressful situation. \u201cIn a go-around, it\u2019s easy for an aircraft to end up on the flight path of a departing aircraft. That can lead to extremely dangerous situations, or at the very least lead to a lot of delays,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netherlands Air Traffic Control (LVNL) asked NLR to develop a tool that automatically alerts air traffic controllers about a go-around situation. Together with two colleagues, J\u00fcrgen wrote an algorithm that compares the nominal approach path against the positions that are actually reported. If the two differ in certain characteristic ways, there is good reason to assume that the aircraft is about to carry out a go-around procedure. In that case, the air traffic controller is alerted immediately. Schiphol started using the tool in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/a>
<\/div><\/div>
\u2018We\u2019ll be flying in hydrogen-powered aircraft ten years from now\u2019<\/div>
When his classmates were giving presentations about seals or their pet guinea pigs, a twelve-year-old Roel van Benthem chose nuclear energy as his topic. <\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Air traffic control in \u2026 space<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to his work on organising airspace properly, J\u00fcrgen\u2019s work at NLR also covers developing analogous strategies for space flight. The zone between 18 kilometres (where air traffic control\u2019s responsibilities stop) and 100 kilometres above the Earth\u2019s surface (where space is deemed to begin) is getting busier and busier too. \u201cThe differences in speed in air traffic here are enormous. Weather balloons move very slowly, for instance, whereas hypersonic flight<\/a> is hugely fast. There is little or no control in that zone at the moment but the ever-increasing numbers of flight movements there mean that this will have to change. We\u2019re also thinking about how we can arrange the transition from the airspace that is controlled currently to these higher regions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this particular researcher, taking part in this project closes the loop nicely. He will be able to be involved on a daily basis with aspects of space flight \u2013 something that he was only able to fantasise about as a four-year-old boy. \u201cNobody knows yet how we\u2019re going to have to organise airspace and space flight in five or ten years\u2019 time. It\u2019s all unexplored territory \u2013 nobody has a manual that says how we ought to do it. To me, that\u2019s a fantastic challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are going to be major changes in the airspace over the coming years. It is getting busier and busier up there and more and more different types of traffic are encountering each other. The big question is therefore how to keep all those different traffic flows \u2013 drones and aircraft, manned and unmanned, fast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1744,"featured_media":505928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-partner.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26049],"tags":[83492,79631],"location":[6763],"article_type":[6758],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[82815],"class_list":["post-473961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobility","tag-aviation-of-the-future","tag-nlr-people","location-netherlands","article_type-interview","reboot-archive-green"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"In the series \u2018NLR People\u2019, we show you who the experts at the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre are, and what they are working on behind the scenes. In this episode: J\u00fcrgen Teutsch. ","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Aafke Eppinga","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/aafke-eppinga\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/jurgen-teutsch.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Mobility<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Mobility<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["Aviation of the future<\/a>","NLR People<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Aviation of the future<\/span>","NLR People<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 years ago","modified":"Updated 2 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on April 23, 2024","modified":"Updated on April 23, 2024"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on April 23, 2024 6:30 am","modified":"Updated on April 23, 2024 6:30 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=473961"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=473961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}