Meet the Polaris ICE team

Thor Hauksson

Tern Systems and Isavia ANS have been collaborating closely for almost 30 years now, developing ATM systems. The newest and most ambitious product being developed is the POLARIS ATM system. The POLARIS ICE team, comprised of members from both companies, is responsible for developing the feature set that will enable Isavia ANS to manage air traffic over the North Atlantic Ocean in the future. The area is more than 5 million square kilometres and is one of the largest control areas in the world.

Here we introduce the next team member: Thor Hauksson

✨Role within the POLARIS ICE team

“I joined Tern Systems last year as a project manager, leading the project with my counterpart at Isavia ANS, Ingi Sturla Þórisson. I am a newcomer to the domain of ATM systems, but not to project management and leadership where I have extensive experience in different domains over the past 30 years. What I have found is that the further you move into leadership, the more you move from the technical skills to the soft skills of collaboration, facilitation and teamwork. Project principles are consistent across domains, evolving to a holistic view of success. What I’ve also found is that the principles of projects are the same across domains, where project management as a profession has evolved to a more complete and holistic view of project success.

My role focuses on three pillars: delivering stakeholder value, meeting scope, time, and budget requirements, and ensuring team alignment and dedication.”

✨Professional experience

“In my first decade, I was a software developer with a bachelor's in computer science and studies in AI. A managerial promotion sparked my interest in project management. Over 30 years, I've worked in financial, telecommunications, IT, and energy sectors and earned a master’s in project management. I've taught at the University of Iceland, served on Iceland's project management association board, and joined IPMA's Advisory Committee.”

✨Life outside of work

“With three grown children, I try to spend as much time with my family and close friends as I can, and whenever possible, combining three important aspects: family gatherings, travel and culinary experience. Having lived in Italy for 3 years, both the culinary and travel preferences are pretty clear - with the extended family and friends of the two countries” 

✈ About Polaris ATM

POLARIS ATM is our flagship product, the next-generation Air Traffic Management System. Our vision is to advance Air Traffic Control by delivering new levels of usability, modernity and innovation. Moving beyond the legacy systems which dominate the industry, POLARIS ATM uses technologies which will support our partner's emerging needs in the next decade and beyond. ANSPs who select POLARIS as their future ATM system will benefit from new features developed with others within our user group, designed with scalability and adaptability in mind.

Meet the Polaris ICE team

Ingi Sturla Þórisson

Tern Systems and Isavia ANS have been collaborating closely for almost 30 years now, developing ATM systems. The newest and most ambitious product being developed is the POLARIS ATM system. The POLARIS ICE team, comprised of members from both companies, is responsible for developing the feature set that will enable Isavia ANS to manage air traffic over the North Atlantic Ocean in the future. The area is more than 5 million square kilometres and is one of the largest control areas in the world.

  Here we introduce the next team member: Ingi Sturla Þórisson

✨Role in the Polaris ICE Team 

As the project lead of the Polaris ICE project from the ANS side, my role is to create and facilitate an environment where the Polaris ICE team, Isavia ANS and Tern management, end users, and all relevant stakeholders can collaboratively express their opinions. This inclusive approach ensures that everyone's voice is heard, contributing to a positive and productive atmosphere, which is crucial for the successful implementation of the project. However, let's not overlook the more tedious parts of the job like planning, risk monitoring, and progress tracking.

✨Professional Experience 

With an industrial engineering background, I initially believed that everything could be derived from formulas and calculated. However, having had the opportunity to develop my career through the banking and utility sectors for almost two decades in business analysis, project and program management, and team leading and management, I have learned that the challenges often hide in the interpersonal communications and behavior between the people working on projects rather than in the technical parts of the projects.

✨Life Outside of Work 

Married with three awesome kids, thanks to my incredible wife, life at home is never dull. Between all the driving to football and athletics practices and getting soaked at their matches, things can get pretty chaotic. But whether we're out hiking, traveling, or just chilling at home for a cozy night, I really treasure the time we spend together. It’s these moments that make all the hectic times worthwhile.

✈ About Polaris ATM

POLARIS ATM is our flagship product, the next-generation Air Traffic Management System. Our vision is to advance Air Traffic Control by delivering new levels of usability, modernity and innovation. Moving beyond the legacy systems which dominate the industry, POLARIS ATM uses technologies which will support our partner's emerging needs in the next decade and beyond. ANSPs who select POLARIS as their future ATM system will benefit from new features developed with others within our user group, designed with scalability and adaptability in mind.

Tern Systems receives a SESAR grant

Tern Systems Aware project has been awarded a 637.000 EUR SESAR grant from the European Union Horizon fund. The grant is awarded to Tern Systems to conduct research and development on human-machine collaboration with artificial situational awareness to provide appropriate supportive actions to the air traffic control officers (ATCOs).

About the Aware project

The research project has been named AWARE and its goal is to enable human-machine collaboration by using an artificial situational awareness system which is enabling AI to anticipate and respond to human needs by understanding human intent and goals. 

While humans are extensively trained to understand the capabilities, limitations, and functionality of the machines they are using, further improvements in human-machine collaboration are currently hindered by the machines lack of awareness of the intent of humans.

The research project will develop and test an AI Assistant Application providing adaptable human-centric support to enhance air traffic controller's (ATCO) performance and to reduce ATCO’s workload despite high task complexity. This will be achieved by development of a human-machine collaboration environment that relies on recognition of ATCO’s intent, the ATCO’s situational awareness (compared to a machine’s situational awareness) and the ATCO’s mental load.

ATCO's intent will be analysed by tracking their attention and human-machine interactions and comparing them to the tasks that need solving as assessed by the artificial situational awareness system. Adaptable support will then be provided either in solving the task they are currently focused on or solving an unrelated task autonomously.

This will allow ATCOs to maintain their skills and expertise while preventing a shift towards supervisory control that has been demonstrated to undermine human capability to take-over in situations with degraded automation. A goal of the adaptable and human-aware system is to maintain ATCOs in an active role, to train their skills and expertise on the job while selectively using higher levels of automation to augment capacity. ATCOs are supported in their tasks rather than substituted by automation. It is expected that ATCOs can handle high-complexity scenarios when assisted by an attention-aware support system. ATCO workload is expected to decrease with the use of support functions.

Research partners

Tern Systems will provide its expertise in leading work in development activities, focusing on defining and developing the platform of AWARE for ATCOs and integrating into Tern's Polaris ATM system and Orion ATM simulator. Creating modern HMI and robust backend services for simulation and operation in ATM has been the focus for Tern Systems and it will be contributing its technical experts to the project.

Tern Systems research partners are the University of Zagreb, International Federation Of Air Traffic Controllers Associations (IFATCA), The Swedish Civil Aviation Administration (LFV), SLOT Consulting, Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Universitat Linz and Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

The photos included with the text are from the kick-off meeting of the research project at EUROCONTROL's headquarters in Brussels, which was held this June. Representing Tern Systems at the meeting were Urszula Kasperska, Hólmfríður Elvarsdóttir, and Gunnar Magnússon.