The CARMA project investigates the feasibility to implement cost-efficient systems for vehicle management on aprons for mid-size airports. The systems are an addition to A-SMGCS systems controlling aircrafts and safety-critical airport vehicles (e.g. follow-me cars) on ground, requiring costly equipment in every vehicle. For vehicle management on aprons cost is reduced by applying common technologies and off-the-shelf hardware.

CARMA is funded by the City of Hamburg, Department of Economics and Labour. It was started in December 2006. In addition to the Institute of Telematics, the consortium includes Hamburg airport (FHG), the German air navigation service provider (DFS), industry (Airbus, Airsys), and further research institutes (DLR, University of Hamburg, Braunschweig University of Technology).

Major tasks conducted by the Institute of Telematics are the investigation of technologies for localization and identification of vehicles, and for wireless communication between vehicles airport backend systems. The Institute also participates in optimizing fleet management and turn-around processes. It is assumed that PDA based on-board units are used in vehicles that localize themselves and send their position to backend systems. Technologies considered for localization are GPS and Galileo, but also sensors installed on the apron and positioning via communication technologies. Candidate technologies for wireless communication come form the area of cellular phones (GSM, UMTS, TETRA) or mobile LANs (WLAN, WiMAX). The technologies have to be supported on the PDAs with standard hardware to keep costs low.