Patent ID: 7385527

Claim:
A smart airport automation system for managing the operation of a plurality of vehicles on an airport surface or in the surrounding airspace, comprising: a plurality of data inputs containing aircraft and airport-related information for an airport from a plurality of sources and in a plurality of different data formats; at least one processor for decoding, assembling, associating, correlating and fusing said plurality of data inputs into structured data, and for distributing said structured data in real-time, wherein said at least one processor computes vehicle position data for vehicles on or near said airport surface in real-time, projects vehicle trajectories or movements, and identifies or predicts unsafe conditions from said projected vehicle trajectories or movements; a vehicle sequence determination system that uses the projected vehicle trajectories to compute a desired sequence among vehicles, and a communications system that transmits in real-time said structured data and advisories comprising sequence advisories containing said desired sequence among vehicles to vehicles on or near said airport surface.