Andreas Hasselberg

Towards a more secure ATC voice communications system

Contradictory to communication safety in the aviation field communication security has received relatively little attention to date, although the threats regarding air traffic security have been rapidly increasing in recent years. Within the project GAMMA (Global ATM Security Management) the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is developing a prototype to support air traffic controllers (ATCO) in detecting intrusions into the air ground voice system and therefore allow subsequent mitigating actions to be conducted.

A-PiMod: A New Approach to Solving Human Factors Problems with Automation

The objective of this paper is to present a new adaptive automation concept which (1) addresses the still open human factors problems with automation from a team centred perspective and (2), as part of this, offers a new ‘team’ centred approach to solving these problems. In so doing, this paper poses questions about what it means to work in a team, what kind of expertise a third crew member (i.e. automation) offers, and how team members might share information about their state, intentions and actions. In elucidating this new automation concept, this paper introduces new role/work practice concepts for pilots, and a potential roadmap for adaptive automation and single crew operations.

Developing a feedback system to augment monitoring performance of aircraft pilots

As a supervisor of a highly automated technical system, a human operator is the “ultima ratio” in abnormal situations that cannot be handled by the automation. Therefore, a human operator must adequately monitor the automated system throughout the entire operation. Unfortunately, humans tend to fall prey to a couple of demons leading to inadequate monitoring behavior, such as boredom, attentional tunneling or perservation. As a consequence, the human might lose situation awareness and be unable to detect and handle an abnormal situation in the given amount time. In this paper, we present a feedback system to augment monitoring performance on the part of an aircraft pilot. The feedback system has been developed under the umbrella of the European research and development project A-PiMod, where novel team-centered concepts for pilot-automation interaction are investigated.

Adaptive Automation and the Third Pilot: Managing Teamwork and Workload in an Airline Cockpit

The objective of this paper is to present a new adaptive automation concept which offers an innovative ‘team’ centred approach to solving human factors/workload management problems. The A-PiMod concept/approach is defined by the concept of partnership – specifically, the “Third Pilot” and the crew and automation are in charge together. We are proposing partnership as opposed to dynamic changes in control function where changes can be controlled autonomously by the system. In support of this, a new multimodal concept is proposed which supports improved assessment of crew state/workload (i.e. information inputs re crew activity/interactions provides a means to communicate with the crew in relation to crew state and decision support, and allows for flexible crew/cockpit interaction).

Modeling of Complex Human-Process Interaction as Framework for Assistance and Supervisory Control of Technical Processes

Interactive processes are omnipresent in fields dealing with automation of complex technical processes, allowing a wide range of application scenarios of assistance systems to support human operators. However, the definition and description of the interaction strongly depends on the application. The description of Human-Process-Interaction HPI in most cases is the key for the development of interaction models leading to a framework for the development of assistance systems. The goal of such assistance systems is to support human operators, or human factors, and thereby improve the considered process in parallel. For the purpose of creating a framework for the development of assistance systems, the Situation-Operator-Model SOM approach is applied. The SOM approach is capable of modeling HPI in a net-like structure representing the complex environment or process and human interactions. By this formal modeling of HPI for the development of human-centered assistance systems based on the underlying modeled interaction is available. In this contribution illustrative examples of different applications for the proposed approach are given by a cognitive, individualized driver assistance system for lane changing maneuvers, by the assessment of operator decisions in air traffic control as well as the operator supervision in semi-automated production process.

Representation of Action Spaces in Multiple Levels of Detail

Abstract Operators of complex dynamic systems like industrial process control or air traffic control should be able to predict future system states and also the actions needed to reach their goals. Models of human planning processes suggest that humans use plans with various levels of details to guide their actions. An assistance systems that would be able to propose plans in multiple levels of detail could lead to a better understanding of plans and thus to a better performance of the operator, because of the possibility to represent plans graphically similar to the operators mental model. In principal the visualization of abstract plan is more robust to changes of details, additionally less changes of visualized plans are necessary. This contribution describes a method to compute multiple representations of action spaces with different levels of detail, which could be used in an assistant system. The method assumes that the process can be described by discrete events and thus the action space of the process contains discrete states. The method is based on the state space generated by a Coloured Petri Net model. First the state space of this model will be computed, in the next step intermediate goal states will be identified, which will constitute the states of a more abstract state space. The arcs connecting these states will be generated according to the reachability of the states in the detailed state space. This procedure can be repeated and finally a representation of an action space in multiple levels of detail results.

Assistance and supervisory control of operators in complex human-process-interaction

The definition of Human-Process-Interaction (HPI) varies as the definition of interaction or process itself is strongly related to the considered research field. However, common to most cases is the need of a description of the interactions between human operators and the process or the task in order to perform further analysis and being enabled to develop innovative operator assistance, assessment, or supervisory tools supporting operators fulfilling their role in complexity gaining environments. Using the Situation-Operation-Modeling (SOM) approach, the description of complex environmental scenes by a network of actions and states is possible. Based on the related formal description of Human-Process-Interaction, the representation of human behaviors, interactions, and process procedures is performed to build up a framework for the development and the implementation of optimized human centered assistance systems. Examples are given by a cognitive, individualized driver assistance system for lane changing maneuvers, assessment of operator decisions in air traffic control, and operator supervision in semi-automated production processes.

MINIMA project: detecting and mitigating the negative impact of automation

In this paper, we present the preliminary steps conducted in the framework of the research project Mitigating Negative Impacts of Monitoring high levels of Automation (MINIMA). The main objectives of MINIMA are (i) to develop vigilance and attention neuro-physiological indexes, and (ii) to implement them in a system that can adapt its behavior and guide the operator’s attention. The goal is to mitigate negative impacts of the foreseen increasing automation in future Air Traffic Control (ATC) scenarios on Air Traffic Controller (ATCo) performance. The first step of research activities consists of better comprehension of Out-Of-The-Loop (OOTL) phenomena and of current methods to measure and compensate such effects. Based on this State of the Art, we propose the MINIMA concept, i.e. a dynamic adaptation of the task environment which is foreseen as a major requirement to keep the human ‘in the loop’, perfectly aware of the traffic situation. In the second part of this paper, we give details about the highly automated Terminal Manoeuvring Area selected as case study. Additionally, we describe the adaptation mechanisms that are planned to be implemented into this task environment and analyzed in the MINIMA project. Finally, the document provides information about the technical implementation of the vigilance and attention measurement that will be used to trigger adaptation of the task environment.

Transition from Conventionally to Remotely Piloted Aircraft – Investigation of Possible Impacts on Function Allocation and Information Accessibility Using Cognitive Work Analysis Methods

Methods from cognitive work analysis were applied to investigate impacts of transitioning from conventional to remote aircraft control on function allocation and information accessibility. An abstraction hierarchy for an Airbus A320 was constructed, followed by an analysis of work functions and function allocation between pilot flying, pilot monitoring, and automation during approach and landing phases. Next, it was analyzed how removing the pilots from the flight deck to a remote location might affect the accessibility of important information that conventional pilots use for decision-making. The results revealed function specific information remote pilots have limited access to, which however seem to be important for decision making (such as visual cues from the environment). Furthermore, based on a supervisory control concept, a function reallocation between one pilot and automation was developed. The analyses contribute to deriving information requirements for remote pilot stations designed for remote single pilot operations in controlled airspace.