SIEMENS

Monday morning rush hour. Downtown Berlin is packed with traffic, and the city’s traffic control center is at its busiest. The public transport authorities’ station masters and schedule planners have their hands full as they try to keep traffic flowing. Their attentionis focused on a large table-like viewing screen in the middle of the control center where they can monitor information on a touch-sensitive display. The data provides an up-to-date overview of the situation on roads and railway tracks. Workers control intervals between trains or optimize travel durations and dwell times by means of finger taps and gestures. They deploy extra trains and arrange to reroute others. The display recognizes up to 32 simultaneous finger commands. Operators can use these commands to zoom in on sections of the rail network, block certain routes or link data, all in the blink of an eye. “That’s our vision of a new generation of traffic control technology for the mobility requirements of the future,”says Kim-Markus Rosenthal, a user interface designer at Siemens Rail Automation.

The technology is still in its infancy. In 2010, developers from Siemens Rail Automation in Braunschweig, Germany presented a prototype of a user-friendly control station at the InnoTrans trade show for transport technology in Berlin. Siemens is now developing this new generation of control technology for railways, an important part of which is an interactive table that can provide an overview of an entire transport network. The system combines functionalities such as scheduling and repair and maintenance planning.

“With this prototype of future technology, we want to show how cooperation can be optimized among the increasingly complex processes taking place in operations control centers,” says Gerd Tasler, a product manager for operations control systems. At the moment, each separate group — local train operators, route and junction planners, and maintenance personnel — uses control technology individually for its own duties. But in order to guarantee mobility in years to come, it will be important to coordinate processes for buses, subways, and light-rail systems, thus helping to reduce transfer times, and eliminate disruptions quickly and safely (“Flexibility in Motion”).

Right now, a quick comparison of departure and waiting times is almost impossible. Whether it’s buses or trains, each network has a separate control system and its own traffic management centers. And employees at such centers only have an overview of the activity in their own area. “The goal is to make information about the current traffic situation in a region available to all participants at the same time,” says Rosenthal. Planners also want to reduce the influence of hierarchies on information. Although organizational structures ensure clear responsibilities, they can hinder quick responses to unforeseen events. If a breakdown interrupts service on a certainroute, there are often long delays. “The new system should cut down on such delays, becausein the future it will give all the people in charge a clear view of the decision-making criteria of the others,” says Rosenthal.

Everything in One Place. The new system’s centerpiece is a software program that merges workstation information into a control center with a uniform user interface. This is based on control technology that combines key management functions such as schedule and conflict management. As before, the staff perform their own duties first and foremost, but decision-makers can access the entire transport system via a huge multitouch display. Decisions can be made quickly and collaboratively. “The technology makes it possible to integrate additional automation functions that take over some of the routine jobs staff would otherwise do,” says Tasler. For example, automatic headway control could optimize travel periods, dwell times, and the intervals between trains, and it could quickly and effectively compensate for deviations from a schedule. In such cases a computer determines the headway and order of trains on a track.

“An interdisciplinary team was needed to solve a job this complex,” says Rosenthal. “We applied our knowledge of rail technology, and the German Aerospace Center contributed its expertise in software ergonomics. The Institute of Transportation Design gave us advice on hardware, and Studio B12 supplied creative ideas for designing interactive elements and the graphical user interface.” Further optimization of the system is now under way. Using the multitouch table, for example, work processes are being analyzed in detail in discussions with customers. “We hope to apply the results to development of additional applications for control technology,” says Rosenthal. Plans call for development of interfaces with the control systems of other modes of transport. The system will then be tested in the field with selected customers.