AAI Partnered With MITRE Corporation for Setting up High-Tech R&D Centre at Hyderabad

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) partnered with MITRE Corporation, the US-based technology provider for setting up the high-tech research, development and training facility in Hyderabad. This merger was done for development of in-house capabilities in the air navigation services.

In the second week of April 2013, AAI and the MITRE Corporation signed two agreements for establishing this Hyderabad centre as well as for transferring the knowledge and technology. The proposed Hyderabad-based R&D and technical centre would be providing the comprehensive laboratory capabilities in order to assist the daily air traffic management operations as well as maintenance of AAI. The centre would also carry out the performance analysis.

As far as the transfer of knowledge and technology is concerned, there would be the sophisticated technology for providing training to air traffic controllers (ATC). This technology would be called Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) computer simulation capability.

HITL is actually the virtual and real-time ATC simulation which needs human interaction with the ground and airborne automation for managing the air traffic in operational scenario. HITL also identifies the ATC issues and develops the solutions for dealing with these issues.
 
MITRE Corporation is additionally offering portable ATC simulation system which can be utilised for training the personnel at any location while making use of just a few laptops.

It is important to note that AAI also partnered with MITRE Corporation since 2006 for various purposes such as Air Traffic Management (CNS-ATM) activities, Navigation, Surveillance and Communications. AAI is the first sponsor of MITRE for HITL Technology.

With this, AAI became one of the very rare advanced aviation research organisations in entire world to possess a capability like this.