Adrian Agogino, a research scientist with the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) at NASA Ames, and NASA researcher Kagan Tumer received the best paper award at the 2007 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems. Their paper, titled "Distributed Agent-Based Air Traffic Flow Management," shows how learning agents can be used to set the separation required along individual aircraft routes to reduce air traffic congestion.
This study made use of software developed at NASA Ames called the Future Air Traffic Management Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET), which won NASA's 2006 Software of the Year Award. FACET's innovative architecture provides a flexible and highly adaptable simulation and modeling environment, while at the same time offering the performance and reliability required for development and evaluation of air traffic management algorithms. The resulting system is highly efficient, portable, and extensible, and FACET has been installed at several airline operation centers and is being modified for use by the Federal Aviation Administration.
