Air Traffic Management Automation Laboratory (ATMAL)

The ATMAL is a facility designed to support air traffic management research including the development and testing of Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS). At the heart of the ATMAL is a large multi-user computational environment consisting of over 100 UNIX workstations.

CTAS as a research platform is continuously being improved. NASA and the FAA have installed prototype CTAS tools in several stages at air traffic control facilities serving the Dallas/Fort Worth airports. To support the use of CTAS at these field sites and confirm the functionality of the research software, NASA has developed a software release process to introduce new and improved CTAS functionality. As new CTAS functionality is developed in the Air Traffic Management Automation Laboratory (ATMAL), it is periodically captured and “downloaded” into the V&V Laboratory.

The ATC Simulation Lab enables NASA researchers to perform complex human-in-the-loop simulations to evaluate the performance of new concepts, procedures, and technologies and determine how well such technologies perform with the addition of humans in the decision-making loop.