Catherine Letondal

Tangible augmented reality for air traffic control

Air traffic control procedures, skills, and systems have co-evolved over decades in a design process involving controllers, programmers, and paper/electronic technologies. Tangible interaction combined with augmented reality is well suited for supporting ATC. Developing these systems is challenging yet feasible. Tangible augmented interactors should be conceived of as continuous physical/virtual artifacts.

Could tangibility improve the safety of touch-based interaction?: exploring a new physical design space for pilot-system interfaces

Touchscreen technologies will most probably replace current instrument panels in future aeronautical cockpits. However, while safety and performance require interactive instruments to maximize the perception, action and collaboration spaces offered to pilots, the literature highlights the limits of touch-based interaction regarding these aspects. Our objective is thus to explore how tangible embodied interaction (TEI), associated with a touch-based flight deck device, could address this issue. In this paper, we contribute a structured design space for pilot-system interactions based on an analysis of the design properties of physical interaction as described in the literature, and on relevant usability, safety and industrial requirements.

3D visualization to mitigate weather hazards in the flight deck: Findings from a user study

In this paper, we report on our exploration of 3D representations to support temporal navigation. We ground our discussion in a user study on the design of a tool that helps airliner pilots to manage dangerous and tall thunderstorm cells. The tool enables pilots to visualize thunderstorm cells, navigate into meteorological predictions in the near future and evaluate safe paths. The visualization is provided on the dual 2D horizontal/vertical view that is already used on the flight deck. In lieu of the standard 2D vertical view, the tool uses a 3D view that facilitates tracking of cells sliding along time slots and altitudes. The user navigates along two dimensions, heading and time slots, thanks to a rotary knob-button. The design is grounded in field studies with pilots. Prototypes have been iteratively evaluated during design walkthrough sessions with pilots. From the preliminary results of this study, we draw research questions related to the need of 3D in the cockpit navigation displays.

Avec le temps!: time, tempo, and turns in human-computer interaction

Time is central to HCI. Humans have varying conceptions and experiences of time: linear versus cyclical; discrete versus continuous; personal versus collective. Computational systems also represent time in various ways. And interaction itself plays out over time. Yet HCI has rarely examined time as a concept in its own right. In particular, the ways in which people conceive of and experience time are often at odds with the ways in which interactive systems represent and express temporal factors. In this workshop we aim to make explicit and question the tacit assumptions that underlie the use of time in human computer interaction. The focal themes for this workshop are: (1) examination of peoples conceptions of time vis a vis various topics (e.g. career, fashion, sustainability); (2) exploration of representations of time in systems; (3) the design of time-oriented interactive systems that support long term reflection, action and behavior change (e.g., as it applies to activities and phenomena like careers, fashion, and sustainability).

Being in the Sky: Framing Tangible and Embodied Interaction for Future Airliner Cockpits

In order to contribute to a design for future airline cockpits that can address the limitations of touch-based interfaces, we analyze tangible dimensions of cockpit activity based on observations and pilot interviews. Working from these data, using TEI theory and concepts of phenomenology, we discuss the implications for tangible design of our findings. We found that the status of sensation in perception, the required level of control in actions, the safety issues using physical objects and the restricted mode of externalization, raise challenges for tangible design. Accordingly, we discuss key concepts for the design of the future cockpit, such as the use of a protected space where interaction may involve compressed externalization, rhythmic structures and customized context-aware adaptations.

GazeForm: Dynamic Gaze-adaptive Touch Surface for Eyes-free Interaction in Airliner Cockpits

An increasing number of domains, including aeronautics, are adopting touchscreens. However, several drawbacks limit their operational use, in particular, eyes-free interaction is almost impossible making it difficult to perform other tasks simultaneously. We introduce GazeForm, an adaptive touch interface with shape-changing capacity that offers an adapted interaction modality according to gaze direction. When the users eyes are focused on interaction, the surface is flat and the system acts as a touchscreen. When eyes are directed towards another area, physical knobs emerge from the surface. Compared to a touch only mode, experimental results showed that GazeForm generated a lower subjective mental workload and a higher efficiency of execution (20% faster). Furthermore, GazeForm required less visual attention and participants were able to concentrate more on a secondary monitoring task. Complementary interviews with pilots led us to explore timings and levels of control for using gaze to adapt modality.

Gesture-based interaction for Strip'TIC, a tangible space for air traffic controllers

In this paper, we explore gesture-based interactions in a mixed interactive system for Air Traffic Controllers. This exploration lies on an analysis of controller gestures, that we were able to observe in a control tower and in a simulator centre. In our design, we focus on gesture-based interaction for the virtual objects associated with the physical objects.

Etude exploratoire du stylo électronique pour le Contrôle Aérien

Current environment used by air traffic controllers mixes digital visualizations (radar screen), and tangible systems with paper strip. Despite the fact that paper strip are robust, flexible and complementary to the radar screen, authorities decided to abandon it in the profit of digital strip. The main issue of paper strip is that the system does not have access to the information written on it. In this paper, we studied an alternative solution with hybrids Anoto pens with contiuous streaming. We first retrieved important tasks performed by air traffic controller, second, we investigated to find out efficient interaction paradigm for their activity. Finally, we developed and assessed an operational prototype with new functionalities. This suggests that it is possible to retain advantages of existing paper strip while informing informatics systems and improving interaction.