Introduction of a more automated environment in En-Route Air Traffic Control : Evaluation of impact generated on the operator by mental workload assessment

International audienceThis article deals with the introduction of partial automation in the En-Route air traffic control working position. More precisely, it presents an experiment whose objective is to evaluate the generated impact on air traffic controllers by the use of a more automated environment, including a conflict aid services system (conflict detector and solver). This impact is evaluated through the assessment of air traffic controllers' mental workload. In this experiment, the evaluation of mental workload is carried out mainly through psychophysiological parameters, especially ocular data. This assessment is compared with subjective evaluation collected by questionnaire and assessment scale, and also with performance indicators analysis focused on communications between controllers and pilots. Results achieved show that automated system proposed in the case of the SESAR project (W.P.4.7.2) seems to be promising because it generates a decrease of mental workload felt in comparison with a non-automated situation

Increasing Air Traffic Control simulations realism through voice transformation

International audienceImproving realism in simulations is a critical issue. In some air traffic control (ATC) simulations we use a pseudo-pilot which pilots up to fifteen aircraft. Thus, having the same voice for different aircraft in the case of pseudo-pilot decreases the realism of the simulation and may be confusing for the controllers especially in study context. In research context, a virtual aircraft piloted in a flight simulator is sometime needed in addition to the pseudo pilot. For simulation needs, the flight simulator aircraft must be merged with pseudo-pilot's one. This is not possible without voice modification since the controller can distinguish the pilot voice. In this paper we propose a method for transforming the voices of the pilot and the pseudo-pilot in order to have one particular voice and cabin noise for each aircraft. The two experiments that have been conducted show that, through our voice modification algorithm, the realism of the simulation is enhanced and the voice biases disappear

LABY : un support d'aide à l'évaluation de choix de conception d'IHM pour le contrôle aérien

International audienceThe iterative approach in the development of Human Machine Interfaces involves the validation of design choices on both aspects of design and means of interaction. In the case of complex interfaces, conduct evaluations of such choices can be very difficult and expensive. In the field of air traffic control, especially for the design of the controllers' radar display, a simulation tool for high-fidelity usage scenarios LABY has been developed to enable ergonomists and engineers to evaluate HMI solutions in a simplified and controllable environment. In this paper we present the use of LABY in three experiments realized in order to design an innovative interface for air traffic controllers

Audio Focus: Interactive spatial sound coupled with haptics to improve sound source location in poor visibility

International audienceIn an effort to simplify human resource management and reduce costs, control towers are now more and more designed to not be implanted directly on the airport but remotely. This concept, known as Remote Control Tower, offers a “digital” working context because the view on the runways is broadcast remotely via cameras, which are located on the physical airport. This offers researchers and engineers the possibility to develop novel interaction techniques. But this technology relies on the sense of sight, which is largely used to give the operator information and interaction, and which is now becoming overloaded. In this paper, we focus on the design and the testing of new interaction forms that rely on the human senses of hearing and touch. More precisely, our study aims at quantifying the contribution of a multimodal interaction technique based on spatial sound and vibrotactile feedback to improve aircraft location. Applied to Remote Tower environment, the final purpose is to enhance Air Traffic Controller's perception and increase safety. Three different interaction modalities have been compared by involving 22 Air Traffic Controllers in a simulated environment. The experimental task consisted in locating aircraft in different airspace positions by using the senses of hearing and touch through two visibility conditions. In the first modality (spatial sound only), the sound sources (e.g. aircraft) had the same amplification factor. In the second modality (called Audio Focus), the amplification factor of the sound sources located along the participant's head sagittal axis was increased, while the intensity of the sound sources located outside this axis was decreased. In the last modality, Audio Focus was coupled with vibrotactile feedback to indicate in addition the vertical positions of aircraft. Behavioral (i.e. accuracy and response times measurements) and subjective (i.e. questionnaires) results showed significantly higher performance in poor visibility when using Audio Focus interaction. In particular, interactive spatial sound gave the participants notably higher accuracy in degraded visibility compared to spatial sound only. This result was even better when coupled with vibrotactile feedback. Meanwhile, response times were significantly longer when using Audio Focus modality (coupled with vibrotactile feedback or not), while remaining acceptably short. This study can be seen as the initial step in the development of a novel interaction technique that uses sound as a means of location when the sense of sight alone is not enough

EEG-based cognitive control behaviour assessment: an ecological study with professional air traffic controllers

Several models defining different types of cognitive human behaviour are available. For this work, we have selected the Skill, Rule and Knowledge (SRK) model proposed by Rasmussen in 1983. This model is currently broadly used in safety critical domains, such as the aviation. Nowadays, there are no tools able to assess at which level of cognitive control the operator is dealing with the considered task, that is if he/she is performing the task as an automated routine (skill level), as procedures-based activity (rule level), or as a problem-solving process (knowledge level). Several studies tried to model the SRK behaviours from a Human Factor perspective. Despite such studies, there are no evidences in which such behaviours have been evaluated from a neurophysiological point of view, for example, by considering brain activity variations across the different SRK levels. Therefore, the proposed study aimed to investigate the use of neurophysiological signals to assess the cognitive control behaviours accordingly to the SRK taxonomy. The results of the study, performed on 37 professional Air Traffic Controllers, demonstrated that specific brain features could characterize and discriminate the different SRK levels, therefore enabling an objective assessment of the degree of cognitive control behaviours in realistic setting

High Rate of Inattentional Deafness in Simulated Air Traffic Control Tasks

The Air Traffic Control (ATC) environment is complex and safety-critical; operators work in dynamic situations and must make high-risk decisions under stress and temporal pressure. The high perceptual load involved in ATC means that controllers’ attention must be shared between several subtasks, with few or no remaining attentional capacity for processing information that is not related directly to the focal task. In this kind of situation, the likelihood of a controller failing to become aware of an auditory alarm, i.e. inattentional deafness, is high. We designed an ecological ATC thanks to the simulation environment called the “LABY” microworld. Twenty participants were required to guide one (low cognitive load) or two planes (high cognitive load) around a given route, while dealing with visual notifications relating to peripheral aircrafts. During the task, participants were played either standard tones which they were told to ignore, or deviant tones (“the alarm”, probability = 0.20) which they were told to report (20 alarms per scenario). We hypothesized that the detection rate of auditory alarms will decrease with cognitive workload. In order to explore this possibility, Behavioral results showed that 28.8% of alarms were not reported when guiding one plane, and up to 46.2% when guiding two planes (high load). The cognitive load increase led to a reduced visual notification detection rate, but the performance to guiding the central aircrafts was maintained, as well as the reaction times to report auditory alarms when perceived. This high rate of inattentional deafness is essential to further physiological studies on alarm omission in aeronautics, such as ERP or eye movement analysis. Potential applications are related to the integrative online detection and prevention of alarm omission, and the online measurement of workload in ecological situation

Cognitive fatigue assessment in operational settings: a review and UAS implications

Recent technological improvements allow UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) operators to carry out increasingly long missions. Shift work was introduced during long-endurance missions to reduce the risk of fatigue. However, despite these short work periods and the creation of a fatigue risk management system (FRMS), the occurrence of intense and monotonous phases remains a factor of cognitive fatigue. This fatigue can have an impact on vigilance, attention, and operator performance, leading to reduce mission safety. This paper aims at presenting different ways to characterize the cognitive fatigue of UAS operators. The use of machine learning to estimate cognitive fatigue based on physiological measures is also presented as a promising venue to mitigate these issues

The neuroergonomic evaluation of human machine interface design in air traffic control using behavioral and EEG/ERP measures

The Air Traffic Control (ATC) environment is complex and safety-critical. Whilst exchanging information with pilots, controllers must also be alert to visual notifications displayed on the radar screen (e.g., warning which indicates a loss of minimum separation between aircraft). Under the assumption that attentional resources are shared between vision and hearing, the visual interface design may also impact the ability to process these auditory stimuli. Using a simulated ATC task, we compared the behavioral and neural responses to two different visual notification designs—the operational alarm that involves blinking colored “ALRT” displayed around the label of the notified plane (“Color-Blink”), and the more salient alarm involving the same blinking text plus four moving yellow chevrons (“Box-Animation”). Participants performed a concurrent auditory task with the requirement to react to rare pitch tones. P300 from the occurrence of the tones was taken as an indicator of remaining attentional resources. Participants who were presented with the more salient visual design showed better accuracy than the group with the suboptimal operational design. On a physiological level, auditory P300 amplitude in the former group was greater than that observed in the latter group. One potential explanation is that the enhanced visual design freed up attentional resources which, in turn, improved the cerebral processing of the auditory stimuli. These results suggest that P300 amplitude can be used as a valid estimation of the efficiency of interface designs, and of cognitive load more generally

Degraded States of Engagement in Air Traffic Control

Safety studies have identified attention as a recurring cause of incidents and accidents in air traffic control. However, little is known of the precise attentional states that lead to degraded ATC performance. Therefore, we surveyed 150 French en route air traffic controllers on the causes of and impacts on perceived cooperation, safety, and performance of seven degraded attentional states from the literature: task-related and task-unrelated mind wandering, mental overload, inattentional deafness and blindness, attentional entropy, and perseveration. Our findings indicated that task- related and task-unrelated mind wandering were the most prevalent but had the least impact on perceived safety. Conversely, inattentional blindness and attentional entropy were less reported but were considered a significant safety concern, while inattentional deafness affected cooperation. Most states were experienced in workload levels consistent with the literature. However, no other factor such as shift work was identified as a cause of these states. Overall, these findings suggest that “attention” is not a specific enough subject for ATC, as attentional issues can occur in various conditions and have different impacts. As far as safety is concerned, inattentional blindness should be the prime target for further research. Neuroergonomics in particular could help develop dynamic countermeasures to mitigate its impact

Attentional costs and failures in air traffic control notifications

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