Ground Services

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Ground Services
GroundServices-Title.png
Started in 03/2017
Description Moving ground service vehicles at airports
Maintainer(s) ThomasS
Contributor(s) ThomasS
Status Under active development as of 03/2017

This article is about a prototype for a ground service module (addon) for FlightGear written in Nasal. Unlike some exisiting ground services which are part of various aircraft, it is intended to be generic and not dependant on specific aircrafts (though there will be dependencies from aircraft dimensions).

Overview

The addon currently moves ground vehicles along an airports taxiways and provides simple catering and fueling services. It is written completely in Nasal and is derived/inspired from the existing AI subsystem and tanker.nas (except for the way vehicles are moving)[1] .

After starting FG, GroundServices goes to "standby" mode, monitoring the distance of the main aircraft to the next airport. When the distance is below 3 nm (main.minairportrange), GroundService switches to "active" mode. It reads the corresponding groundnet.xml and stores the groundnet in a graph data structure.

For simplification, the coordinates are projected to a 2D xy coordinate system, where all calculations are executed (The projection currently is a too simple linear projection).

Ground vehicles are launched as defined in AI/groundservices.xml. "initialcount" vehicles of each type will be launched at their defined home location and move between the listed destinations (random groundnet nodes are used if nothing is configured). Moving of vehicles is implemented by first finding a path along the graph (Graph.findPath()), which is quite simple due to Edsger Dijkstras preliminary work. The vehicles will move along their defined path like a train on rails. They will allways be fixed at some specific position on some edge (class GraphPosition). For accomplishing a smooth transition from one edge to the other, the graph not only allows line edges but also arc edges. So the shortest path found through the graph will be smoothed (GraphUtils.createPathFromGraphPosition() and GraphUtils.createTransition()) by truncating line edges and connecting these by arc edges. These graph edges will be added temporarily to the graph and will be removed from the graph when the vehicle reaches its destination. Smoothing the graph path is a quite complex process with many potential combinations (eg. short edges, small angles between edges, orientation of vehicles). Optimizing this process still is a work in progress.

When the distance to the airport exceeds 3 nm, GroundServices switches back to "standby" mode, removing all ground vehicles.

The models included are

The GUI provides the options to

  • launch an additional vehicle (select in combo box and button "Launch")
  • launch catering and fuel service for an arrived aircraft
  • visualize the groundnet (which is implemented quite inefficiently by multiple models for each length due to the lack of dynamic model scaling). The color of the groundnet lines should be yellow, but differs for some unknown reason (lighting effects?) from red to orange.
  • toggle auto movement of vehicles and auto service
  • open a canvas map which shows the location of the vehicles and service points
  • write the state of each vehicle to the logfile

Background

There are already existing ground service components in FG providing Pushback, FollowMe, Ramp Marshall and Jetways (maybe even more). Integrating these with the existing AI system appears straightforward. Routes for driving vehicles on the apron could be derived from groundnet.xml. [2] The Nasal approach of tanker.nas however looks more comprehensive. Reading groundnet.xml from Nasal apparently isn't possible yet without doing explicit XML parsing. Though the airportinfo function in nasal provides parking and taxiway information, these might be derived from different sources than groundnet.xml.

Having the groundnet.xml information available in Nasal in combination with the logic in tanker.nas might provide a simple way for having vehicles moving on the apron.[3]

Requirements

GroundServices was developed and tested with FlightGear 2016.4.3, 2017.3.1 and EDDKs, EHAMs, EGLLs and EDDFs groundnet. As of release 0.3.0 it is a FlightGear addon and so requires at least FlightGear version 2017.3. There are no further known special requirements and it should also work with later FlightGear versions and airports that have a groundnet defined.

The solution is based on the airports groundnet.xml. So for now you just have to make sure that your airports groundnet.xml is reasonable, meaning parking positions are at correct location and all connected to taxiways. Look at https://github.com/thomass171/GroundServices/releases for releases.[4]

Current Status

GroundServices currently moves ground vehicles along an airports taxiways and provides simple catering and fueling services. Its just a prototype and still might contain bugs. There is a risk of null/nil pointer incidents. Indicator for this is when all vehicles stop moving.

The catering and fueling services are composed of a catering vehicle approaching an aircrafts right front door and a fuel truck approaching the left wing. The approach destinations are calculated from the aircraft position and a defined door and wing position of the aircraft. Currently the implementation only uses a rough approximation of these positions, because there seem to be only a few aircraft models out there that have door positions defined. [5]

Furthermore, there is no way to get information about an AI aircraft model from the property tree currently.

Known problems are (see also issue list):

  • Ground Services doesn't work with scenery outside FG_HOME (solved in release v0.3.0)
  • Vehicles appear twisting at some nodes when turning (partly solved in release v0.3.0)

Releases

The module is available here. It is recommended to use the latest release and install the module from the zip archive.

v0.1.0 (20170602)

Initial release

v0.2.0 (August 2017)

Modifications:

  • Fixes the problem of vehicles having wrong elevation when they were launched before the scenery was completely loaded.
  • Uses position dependant elevation for visualized ground net segments instead of airport elevation.
  • Fuel truck added
  • Now finds a vehicle home position even for groundnets having inconsistent headings at parking positions
  • Fixes several "non-objects have no members" problems.
  • Delayed launch of initial vehicles
  • preparation for AI traffic integration

v0.3.0 (November 2017)

Changes:

  • Further fixes for correct elevation of vehicles
  • Fix for airports with negative longitude (didn't work here)
  • Service points and schedules are introduced. Service points let catering and fuel trucks approach aircrafts.
  • Canvas map shows location of vehicles, service points and main aircraft
  • Vehicles have varying speed (accelerate and brake)
  • The module is an addon now

Installation

As of release 0.3.0 this module is an addon. So installation differs.

up to 0.2.0

GroundServices is installed by just unpacking the zip file into a FG_ROOT folder. You might backup the folder previously, because there is no real uninstall. Choose a "no overwrite" option for avoiding overwriting existing files, though no name conflicts are known currently.

In $FG_ROOT/defaults.xml (originally, $FG_ROOT/preferences.xml) an entry is required for AI/groundservices.xml:

  <ai>
      ...
      <groundnet-cache type="bool">true</groundnet-cache>
      <tankers include="AI/tankers.xml"/>
      <groundservices include="AI/groundservices.xml"/>    
  </ai>

and in menubar.xml in the AI section (eg. below of the jetway entry):

  <item>
        <name>GroundServices</name>
        <enabled>true</enabled>
        <binding>
            <command>dialog-show</command>
            <dialog-name>groundservices</dialog-name>
        </binding>
  </item>

as of 0.3.0

The addon is installed just like any other addon as described in Addons. Despite being an addon, the menu item still needs to be installed manually in menubar.xml as in previous releases (however, the menu item is optional) and the file LOCATIONOFADDON/gui/dialogs/groundservices.xml be copied to $FG_ROOT/gui/dialogs.

For displaying a map from the gui menu, the four files in LOCATIONOFADDON/Nasal/canvasmap need to be copied to $FG_ROOT/Nasal/canvas/map.

Running

After starting FG with the aircraft located on an airport that has a groundnet defined (I propose using ufo on EDDK for a first attempt) the vehicles will start moving from their home point immediately. In EDDK vehicles will move near the main terminal and should be easily visible. EHAM, EDDF and EGLL are considerably larger and have no home configured. In EHAM vehicles will start from cargo position R, which is in the south west of the airport. Move ufo near there (by PHI; thats very easy) for seeing the vehicles.

If any problems occur, check FGs logfiles for nasal errors. In addition a logfile FG_HOME/groundservices.log is written by GroundService and can be checked for errors.

Monitoring vehicles

Its not easy to detect the current position of ground vehicles. Seeing them from your current view point is mere chance.

Phi

Ground vehicles displayed in Phi

An option for monitoring vehicles is the map of Phi. This however requires two patches to the file Phi/topics/Map/AILayer.js in FG_ROOT. Near line 81 the type "gsvehicle" needs to added:

self.addData(self.aiPropsToGeoJson(data, [
  "tanker","gsvehicle", "aircraft", "multiplayer", "carrier" ], self._map.getBounds()));

and near line 139 these models need to be considered:

if (type == "gsvehicle") {
    callsign = child.getNode("id").getValue();
} else {
    if (type == "carrier") {
 ...


Don't forget the closing curly brace a few lines beneath (not displayed here). Reload Phi in your browser and choose "Other Traffic" in the layer selection menu.

Canvas Map (as of 0.3.0)

Ground Services map in EDDF

The map is opened by clicking the "map" button in the Ground Services menu dialog (see installation for enabling the menu).


For having the vehicles in the map updated quickly, the map layer needs to be included into the Canvas map controller. This is done by adding the tag "GROUNDSERVICES-vehicle" in the file $FG_ROOT/Nasal/canvas/map/aircraftpos.controller.nas in function update_quickly() for being updated regularly:

"GROUNDSERVICES-vehicle","TFC", "FLT",

Configuration

The main configuration file is AI/groundservices.xml. When no home position is defined for an airport, the first (or last) parking node will be used as home.

Uninstall

Uninstallation up to release 0.2.0 is done by manually removing the files extracted from the zip file or by restoring FG_ROOT from a backup.

As of release 0.3.0 the addon just is removed.

For all releases the modifications in menubar.xml must be undone manually.

Roadmap

The list of possible improvements is endless. The following are some of the ideas (without any order):

  • The turning radius of vehicles at parking nodes is too small sometimes, which make vehicles turn unrealistically twisting Pending Pending
  • Vehicles should accelerate instead of just switching speed. 100}% completed Done Done
  • Vehicles shouldn't move on taxiways but on dedicated lanes. This requires either an extended version of groundnet.xml (newer versions of apt.dat might contain a groundnet for ground service vehicles) or some smart algorithm. In any case, a big challenge. Pending Pending
  • Make a fuel and catering vehicle approach parking AI aircraft 100}% completed Done Done
  • Vehicles should be animated, starting with a catering vehicle moving up its container. Unfortunately the current catering vehicle model doesn't allow animation.Pending Pending
  • Animation of wheels. Pending Pending
  • Check using ai.nas mentioned in Scripted_AI_Objects. Pending Pending
  • Make it a Flightgear addon. 100}% completed Done Done
  • Add a canvas GUI for monitoring vehicles 100}% completed Done Done

Gallery

A followme vehicle on its way at EHAM.

GroundServices-screen-007.png


References

References
  1. ThomasS  (Jun 2nd, 2017).  Re: .
  2. ThomasS  (Feb 1st, 2017).  Re: Ground services ! .
  3. ThomasS  (Feb 1st, 2017).  Re: Ground services ! .
  4. ThomasS  (Jul 28th, 2017).  Re: Ground services ! .
  5. ThomasS  (Jul 28th, 2017).  Re: .