A Virtual Simulation-Pilot Agent for Training of Air Traffic Controllers
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216305%3A26230%2F23%3APU150661" target="_blank" >RIV/00216305:26230/23:PU150661 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/10/5/490" target="_blank" >https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/10/5/490</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/aerospace10050490" target="_blank" >10.3390/aerospace10050490</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
A Virtual Simulation-Pilot Agent for Training of Air Traffic Controllers
Original language description
In this paper we propose a novel virtual simulation-pilot engine for speeding up air traffic controller (ATCo) training by integrating different state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools. The virtual simulation-pilot engine receives spoken communications from ATCo trainees, and it performs automatic speech recognition and understanding. Thus, it goes beyond only transcribing the communication and can also understand its meaning. The output is subsequently sent to a response generator system, which resembles the spoken read-back that pilots give to the ATCo trainees. The overall pipeline is composed of the following submodules: (i) an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system that transforms audio into a sequence of words; (ii) a high-level air traffic control (ATC)-related entity parser that understands the transcribed voice communication; and (iii) a text-to-speech submodule that generates a spoken utterance that resembles a pilot based on the situation of the dialogue. Our system employs state-of-the-art AI-based tools such as Wav2Vec 2.0, Conformer, BERT and Tacotron models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work fully based on open-source ATC resources and AI tools. In addition, we develop a robust and modular system with optional submodules that can enhance the system's performance by incorporating real-time surveillance data, metadata related to exercises (such as sectors or runways), or even a deliberate read-back error to train ATCo trainees to identify them. Our ASR system can reach as low as 5.5% and 15.9% absolute word error rates (WER) on high- and low-quality ATC audio. We also demonstrate that adding surveillance data into the ASR can yield a callsign detection accuracy of more than 96%.
Czech name
—
Czech description
—
Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
—
OECD FORD branch
10201 - Computer sciences, information science, bioinformathics (hardware development to be 2.2, social aspect to be 5.8)
Result continuities
Project
—
Continuities
S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach
Others
Publication year
2023
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Aerospace
ISSN
2226-4310
e-ISSN
—
Volume of the periodical
10
Issue of the periodical within the volume
5
Country of publishing house
CH - SWITZERLAND
Number of pages
25
Pages from-to
1-25
UT code for WoS article
000995051300001
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85160734440