Ecological interface design: supporting fault diagnosis of automated advice in a supervisory air traffic control task

Abstract

Future air traffic control will have to rely on more advanced automation to support human controllers in their job of safely handling increased traffic volumes. A prerequisite for the success of such automation is that the data driving it are reliable. Current technology, however, still warrants human supervision in coping with (data) uncertainties and consequently in judging the quality and validity of machine decisions. In this study, ecological interface design was used to assist controllers in fault diagnosis of automated advice, using a prototype ecological interface (called the solution space diagram) for tactical conflict detection and resolution in the horizontal plane.Results from a human-in-the-loop simulation, in which sixteen participants were tasked with monitoring automation and intervening whenever required or desired, revealed a significant improvement in fault detection and diagnosis in a complex traffic scenario. Additionally, the experiment also exposed interesting interaction patterns between the participants and the advisory system, which seemed unrelated to the fault diagnosis task. Here, the explicit meansends links appeared to have affected participants' control strategy, which was geared toward taking over control from automation, regardless of the fault condition. This result suggests that in realizing effective human-automation teamwork, finding the right balance between offering more insight (e.g., through ecological interfaces) and striving for compliance with single (machine) advice is an avenue worth exploring further.

Exploring Short-Term Training Effects of Ecological Interfaces: A Case Study in Air Traffic Control

“…To illustrate, consider the Solution Space Diagram (SSD) shown in Figure 1, an ecological interface developed for ATC [9], [10]. In its most succinct form, the SSD portrays velocity obstacles (or, conflict zones) in speed and heading within…”

“…Vectoring the controlled aircraft outside such a conflict zone resolves the conflict. See [9], [10] for more details on the design. An example ATC 'best practice' to resolve a crossing conflict in the horizontal plane, featuring two aircraft flying at different speeds, is to vector the slow aircraft behind the faster one.…”

“…The scope will be training ATC novices, who are unbiased by previously developed strategies, in a conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) task in the horizontal plane. An ecological interface developed in a previous study, the Solution Space Diagram (SSD) [9], [10], will be used for this purpose. The general approach will be similar to the study conducted by Christoffersen and colleagues [7], [8] in that the control performance and acquired knowledge of two participant groups are tested and compared after a transfer manipulation where the ecological support will be removed.…”

Human Performance Analysis of Processes for Retrieving Beidou Satellite Navigation System During Breakdown

“…Although direct evidence on factors that influence the operation of this special task is limited, studies on other process control operations with similar working requirements can provide valuable information. The fault diagnosis and resolution process has been studied intensively in the nuclear power plant, air traffic control (Langer and Braithwaite, 2016;Trapsilawati et al, 2016;Borst et al, 2017), submarine (Roberts et al, 2017), and many other backgrounds (Vicente et al, 2004;Wickens et al, 2009;Sebok and Wickens, 2016). Operator performance of safety-critical and highly automated environments monitoring has also been studied (Funke et al, 2016;Cymek, 2018).…”

Visualizing complexities: the human limits of air traffic control

“…Uncertainty was taken into account and an optimal maneuver time could thus be defined, but the uncertainty modeling was not detailed in the articles. Bakker and Blom (2000) compare different conflict prediction models taking into account uncertainties. They explain that uncertainty model adopted by HIPS uses geometric approach: Aircraft are modeled by ellipses and the conflict predictor compares the distance between ellipses and the separation standard.…”