Recording and Replay systems for Air Traffic Control

March 3,  2010

Already complying with ICAO requirements for radar recording, Ricochet’s approach to screen recording is to accurately record and replay what was displayed at each screen at any given time in order to get the complete picture.

Screen Recording – Through The Wall (TTW) and At The Glass (ATG)
Investigation would be easier if the officers were able to see exactly what was presented to the controller, to hear what was said and to reconstruct the actions taken at the time of the incident. The Ricochet software records the screen to mirror all operations, including mouse movements and information displayed to the controllers. Available for replay less than a minute after recording, this tool is optimized for fast recall, as well as for incident investigations. In order to have the complete picture at replay one will in fact need to have both the “At The Glass” information displayed to the controller and the “Through The Wall” information, representing what the sensors actually saw.

Ricochet address two main technologies in capturing Controller Working Position (CWP) screens: Capturing screens with TTW means tapping raw, unprocessed and processed data feeds from the sources, in real-time, directly from the copper. At playback the data is fed into a replay CWP for reconstruction during analysis of the scenario. The challenge is to recreate the exact picture of the CWP’s display due to local control of the CWP and to capture messages generated by the underlying operating system like errors and warnings.

Screen recording can be done by continuously reading and storing the display memory, or by ATG where one taps into the DVI/RGB signal on the monitor cable and captures the image as displayed on the CWP screens. The CWP is unaffected by the ATG method and recreates the exact picture. ATG works for all systems, and also if the ATM system or CWPs are upgraded or replaced. During replay, the screen images are recreated in full synchrony with position communication. To make sure no information is lost between screen captures, the screen is typically captured 4-8 times per second.
 
“This is a unique software for incident investigations”, says Jørn Rød-Larsen, President & CEO, Ricochet AS. “Combining synchronized ATG and TTW recording, provides a total replay and reconstruction solution, also for simulation and training”.

For more information, please contact:
Jørn Rød-Larsen, President & CEO, Ricochet AS +47 9949 3000

About Ricochet

Pioneer in the field of software based digital recording systems, Ricochet is a globally oriented player with more than 250 customer installations across the world.  Ricochet is a private limited company located in the middle of Norway’s center for high tech research and design. The company has extensive and worldwide sales-, installation- and service network through partner companies. The company is a technological leader in Unified Recording.
www.ricochet-recorder.com

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