Ensuring Safety for Artificial-Intelligence-Based Automatic Speech Recognition in Air Traffic Control Environment

This paper describes the safety assessment conducted in SESAR2020 project PJ.10-W2-96 ASR on automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology implemented for air traffic control (ATC) centers. ASR already now enables the automatic recognition of aircraft callsigns and various ATC commands including command types based on controller–pilot voice communications for presentation at the controller working position. The presented safety assessment process consists of defining design requirements for ASR technology application in normal, abnormal, and degraded modes of ATC operations. A total of eight functional hazards were identified based on the analysis of four use cases. The safety assessment was supported by top-down and bottom-up modelling and analysis of the causes of hazards to derive system design requirements for the purposes of mitigating the hazards. Assessment of achieving the specified design requirements was supported by evidence generated from two real-time simulations with pre-industrial ASR prototypes in approach and en-route operational environments. The simulations, focusing especially on the safety aspects of ASR application, also validated the hypotheses that ASR reduces controllers’ workload and increases situational awareness. The missing validation element, i.e., an analysis of the safety effects of ASR in ATC, is the focus of this paper. As a result of the safety assessment activities, mitigations were derived for each hazard, demonstrating that the use of ASR does not increase safety risks and is, therefore, ready for industrialization

Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding for Radar Label Maintenance Support Increases Safety and Reduces Air Traffic Controllers’ Workload

Air traffic controllers (ATCos) from Austro Control together with DLR quantified the benefits of automatic speech recognition and understanding (ASRU) on workload and flight safety. As the baseline procedure, ATCos enter all clearances manually (by mouse) into the aircraft radar labels. As part of our proposed solution, the ATCos are supported by ASRU, which is capable of delivering the required inputs automatically. The ATCos are only prompted to make corrections, when ASRU provided incorrect output. Overall amount of time required for manually inserting clearances, i.e., by clicking and selecting the correct input on the screen, reduced from 12,800 seconds during 14 hours of simulations time down to 405 seconds, when ATCos were supported by ASRU. A reduction of radar label maintenance time through ASRU might not be surprising given earlier experiments. However, a factor greater than 30 outperforms earlier findings. In addition, this paper also considers safety aspects, i.e., how often ATCos support provided an incorrect input into the aircraft radar labels with and without ASRU. This paper shows that ASRU systems based on artificial intelligence are reliable enough for their integration into air traffic control operations rooms