Situation Awareness and Levels of Automation

Abstract

During the first year of this project, a taxonomy of theoretical levels of automation (LOAs) was applied to the advanced commercial aircraft by categorizing actual modes of McDonald Douglas MD-11 autoflight system operation in terms of the taxonomy. As well, high LOAs included in the taxonomy (e.g., supervisory control) were modeled in the context of MD-11 autoflight systems through development of a virtual flight simulator. The flight simulator was an integration of a re-configurable simulator developed by the Georgia Institute Technology and new software prototypes of autoflight system modules found in the MD-11 cockpit. In addition to this work, a version of the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) was developed for application to commercial piloting tasks. A software package was developed to deliver the SAGAT and was integrated with the virtual flight simulator