Sensis wins NASA contract on air-travel simulation

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Apr 11, 2008 by Tampone, Kevin

DeWITT - Anyone who's ever stepped into an airport could tell you the skies above the United States are somewhat complicated.

"You can't really look at a small piece of [the nation's airspace] to understand it," says Douglas Sweet, director of Sensis Corporation's Seagull Technology Center in California. "You can have a major problem on the East Coast that affects flights on the West Coast."

In other words, if there's a raging blizzard in New York, good luck taking off from Los Angeles on time.

Sensis' Seagull center won a contract from NASA that aims to improve how computers simulate and model those convoluted airways. Under the yearlong deal, Sensis will attempt to draw together a variety of existing modeling and simulation systems and get them to work together.

Various private companies and government agencies have developed a host of airspace simulators over the years, Sweet explains. All have good points and bad.

The goal of the NASA contract is to create a framework that can pull the best points from each existing system. Sensis won't create some sort of super-simulator - a program to model the nation's entire airspace simultaneously would take immense computing power, Sweet says.

Rather, NASA wants Sensis to come up with a way for people to select what they need for specific research projects.

For example, one project might require extensive modeling of the space immediately surrounding an airport. Another might need more information on the air between busy airports.

"The idea is to be able pick and choose and many the appropriate simulation capabilities," Sweet says.

The main customer for the software would be the government, he adds. The new system could be opened up to private companies if it works well, but government agencies conduct much of the research on the nation's airspace and would be the major users of the new system.

NASA has been heavily involved in developing air-traffic management systems for 30 or 40 years, Sweet says.

Researchers could use the new simulation capabilities to explore how future changes would affect the country's skies. New air-traffictechniques, procedures, infrastructure, and technology could all be checked on a computer before real-world testing, Sweet says.

Existing conditions could also be modeled, he adds. For example, if an airport is getting a new runway, researchers could run simulations to determine how many more flights that city could handle.

Researchers use such simulations now, but the system Sensis aims to develop would improve them.

One of the biggest challenges in the project is the diverse nature of all the existing simulation systems, Sweet says. Different groups have designed them and they all have different capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses.

The Sensis Seagull center focuses on research and development. Its 45 employees work mainly on air-traffic management projects. The center's major customers are NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Headquartered in DeWitt, Sensis develops air-traffic control systems, radar technology, and other sensors for civilian and military use. The company has 550 employees.