Traffic manager: a flexible desktop simulation tool enabling future ATM research

In 1997, the National Aerospace Laboratory of the Netherlands (NLR) started working on an air traffic management (ATM) concept called "free flight." Under this concept, aircraft are allowed to choose their own path, while maintaining separation from all other aircraft. The study originally focused on the human factors of airborne separation in a free flight environment. To provide flight crews with a challenging task that might provide insight into some interesting cockpit human factors issues of airborne separation, artificially high traffic densities and high conflict rates were required. This called for a simulation platform scalable to meet the traffic needs and flexible enough to model the interaction of aircraft in this new environment. The simulation tool developed was called the traffic manager (TMX). In this paper, we present a short history on the development of TMX, give a description of its major features, cover specific research capabilities such as the airborne separation assistance system, and give some examples of applications of TMX in research projects.