Supporting air traffic control collaboration with a tabletop system

International audienceCollaboration is key to safety and efficiency in Air Traffic Control. Legacy paper-based systems enable seamless and non-verbal collaboration, but trends in new software and hardware for ATC tend to separate controllers more and more, which hinders collaboration. This paper presents a new interactive system designed to support collaboration in ATC. We ran a series of interviews and workshops to identify collaborative situations in ATC. From this analysis, we derived a set of requirements to support collaboration: support mutual awareness, communication and coordination, dynamic task allocation and simultaneous use with more than two people. We designed a set of new interactive tools to fulfill the requirements, by using a multi-user tabletop surface, appropriate feedthrough, and reified and partially-accomplishable actions. Preliminary evaluation shows that feedthrough is important, users benefit from a number of tools to communicate and coordinate their actions, and the tabletop is actually usable by three people both in tightly coupled tasks and parallel, individual activities. At a higher level, we also found that co-location is not enough to generate mutual awareness if users are not engaged in meaningful collaboration

Amélioration du circuit visuel des contrôleurs aériens pour relier les données entre visualisations en utilisant des transitions animées

International audienceSeveral separate displays are used by Air Traffic Controllers, such as radar view, flight lists view or paper strips. In order to link the information between these views and keep focus on a subset of flights, controllers are required to do visual operations (eye gaze, analysis of visual properties etc.). This process can be disruptive when traffic increases and when visualizations display large amounts of objects. In this paper we propose the use of animated transitions to replace the visual paths controllers take. We discuss this technique and show results of a predictive evaluation that suggests an improvement in users' performance

Preliminary Design and Evaluation of Portable Electronic Flight Progress Strips

There has been growing interest in using electronic alternatives to the paper Flight Progress Strip (FPS) for air traffic control. However, most research has been centered on radar-based control environments, and has not considered the unique operational needs of the airport air traffic control tower. Based on an analysis of the human factors issues for control tower Decision Support Tool (DST) interfaces, a requirement has been identified for an interaction mechanism which replicates the advantages of the paper FPS (e.g., head-up operation, portability) but also enables input and output with DSTs. An approach has been developed which uses a Portable Electronic FPS that has attributes of both a paper strip and an electronic strip. The prototype flight strip system uses Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to replace individual paper strips in addition to a central management interface which is displayed on a desktop computer. Each PDA is connected to the management interface via a wireless local area network. The Portable Electronic FPSs replicate the core functionality of paper flight strips and have additional features which provide a heads-up interface to a DST. A departure DST is used as a motivating example. The central management interface is used for aircraft scheduling and sequencing and provides an overview of airport departure operations. This paper will present the design of the Portable Electronic FPS system as well as preliminary evaluation results.This research is supported by NASA grant NCC 2-1147

Mediation role of boundary objects in articulating common information spaces.

This paper presents a conceptualization of the mediation role of common information artifacts in articulating collaborative work. These artifacts are perceived as boundary objects which are characterized as device for intermediating local and global articulation, device for interpretive articulation, and device for organizing coordination. This conception is based on grounded theory driven qualitative study of collaboration among heterogeneous work communities in the air traffic control work process. Each work community setting in the airport is taken to be a Common Information Space (CIS), with the airport constituting multiple overlapping interdependent CISs. The common information systems constituting the CIS of different work communities act as boundary objects. These act not only as devices for placing information in common but also as devices that help synthesize multiple perspectives and establish common enough interpretation of shared information to undertake tasks collaboratively

Designing for Embodied and Rich Interaction in Home IoT

Internet of things (IoT) artifacts form systems where touchscreen and speech interaction is the norm. As IoT systems are inherently open (artifacts can be added or removed, software can be updated), we observe that the natural state of an IoT system is changed, “growth.” This chapter describes a designerly experiment exploring how to design for embodied and rich interaction in these “growing” IoT systems. We present four design cases showcasing four approaches to the design challenge: a hybrid, a modular, a shape changing, and a service approach. We describe and appraise the four approaches and discuss insights from the designerly experiment. We conclude that it is indeed possible to design for embodied and rich interaction in “growing” IoT systems and see our work as a first step toward diversifying IoT interaction styles

Experimental Evaluation Of Portable Electronic Flight Progress Strips

Air traffic service providers are increasingly embracing electronic alternatives to the traditional paper Flight Progress Strip (FPS). However, most development of such electronic systems, and of Decision Support Tools (DSTs) in general, has centered on radar-based en route or terminal-area facilities, rather than the airport air traffic control tower. Based on an analysis of the unique human factors requirements of the control tower environment, a prototype Portable Electronic FPS has been designed that also serves as an interface to a DST for departure operations. The Portable Electronic FPS has been implemented using a system of networked, handheld computers as prototype hardware. A study has been conducted to evaluate the usability of the Portable Electronic FPS. The study consisted of a human-in-the-loop experiment that simulated the tasks an air traffic controller performs at a major airport. Three issues were explored: the importance of FPS portability, the appropriateness of departure sequence DST advisories distributed onto each Portable Electronic FPS, and the advantages of interaction mechanisms enabled by an electronic interface. Test subjects used multiple versions of the Portable Electronic FPS as well as a current-day paper FPS. Quantitative measures of departure sequencing efficiency and traffic monitoring ability were recorded for each test subject, as well as subjective FPS preference rankings. This paper reviews the final design and prototype implementation of the Portable Electronic FPS, presents the design and results of the usability study, and suggests future research that should be pursued in order to create an operationally deployable Portable Electronic FPS system