Hendrik Oberheid

Cooperative Arrival Management in Air Traffic Control - A Coloured Petri Net Model of Sequence Planning

A Coloured Petri Net model implemented in CPN Tools is presented which simulates a potential future arrival planning process in air traffic control. The planning process includes a cooperation between airborne and ground side in which the aircraft involved provide information e.g. with regard to their estimated earliest and latest times of arrival at the airport. This information is then used by a planning system on the ground to establish a favorable sequence in which aircraft will be led to the runway. The model has been built in order to acquire a better understanding of how the behavior of individual actors (i.e. aircraft) within the cooperation influences the outcome of the overall sequence planning process. A peculiarity of the CP-net from a modeling point of view lies in the fact that state space analysis is used repeatedly during each cycle of the planning process to generate and evaluate the potential solutions to the sequence planning problem. The results gained through queries on the state space are then re-fed into the simulation and analysis for the next planning cycle. The results from the model will in future be used to build realistic scenarios and assumptions on how different actors will interact with the system from a human factors point of view.

Visual Controller Aids to Support Late Merging Operations for Fuel Efficient and Noise Reduced Approach Procedures

Objective: The paper studies aircraft ghosting on a radar display as a potential means to support air traffic controllers with late merging operations in approach control. Background: A formerly presented late merging concept has pointed out operational benefits in terms of fuel efficiency and noise reduction. A first exploratory study has shown that the concept puts high task demands on the air traffic controller to achieve necessary precision. The provision of a ghosting system is considered as a potential automation tool which supports the controller in merging traffic. Methods: A microworld simulation of approach control was used to study the effect of two potential ghosting solutions (time-based vs. distance based ghosting) on control performance while executing late merging operations. Objective performance, situation awareness (SAGAT), and subjective ratings on the ghosting system were the main evaluation criteria. Results: The results confirm the hypothesized positive effects of both ghosting solutions on objective merging performance. Under certain conditions, ghosting had a negative effect on situation awareness as regards the position of real aircraft. Finally, the majority of participants reported that time-based ghosting support is less strenuous and more helpful for merging operation than distance-based ghosting. Conclusions: Ghosting brings about performance benefits. Yet, SA of real aircraft has to be ensured. Application: Results will inform the system design and experimental design for follow-up studies in the full mission simulator.

Supervision of open systems using a situation-operator-modeling approach and higher petri net formalisms

The paper presents a concept for the automated supervision of human interactions in environments with complex system dynamics. The supervision concept is formulated using a special system-theoretic Situation-Operator-Modeling (SOM) approach which in the context of this work is practically implemented and simulated using Higher Petri Net (HPN) formalisms and tools. In order to reflect the complex system nature suitable HPN patterns are developed which make use of active tokens with autonomous, continuous-time dynamics. The approach is demonstrated on the supervision of a lane change maneuver in highway driving with special focus on the checking of driver actions with respect to goal-conformance.

Visual assistance to support late merging operations in 4D trajectory-based arrival management

Within the German Aerospace Center (DLR) project FAGI (Future Air Ground Integration), new operational concepts and automation support systems for fuel- and noise-efficient arrival management are being developed. An essential element of the FAGI concept is a modified airspace and route structure, featuring the late merging of different arrival routes to support user-preferred flight profiles such as Continuous Descent Approaches (CDA). The present paper studies aircraft ghosting solutions on the radar display as a potential means to support controllers with merging different streams of aircraft with sufficient precision. In addition to a technical presentation of different ghosting principles, the results of two human in the loop studies are reported. Using objective and subjective data on performance, workload, situation awareness, and eye-tracking analysis, the benefits, trade-offs and acceptance of the visual assistance functions are discussed.

Formalization and automated detection of human errors

The contribution describes a novel approach for the detection and classification of human errors in interaction with complex dynamic systems, according to Donierpsilas error taxonomy. The programmed implementation of the approach based on situation-operator-modeling (SOM) is already realized using software tools for high-level Petri nets (HPN). An experimental environment consisting of an arcade style game communicating with the HPN-software CPN Tools is used. With CPN Tools, the interaction between a human operator and the arcade game is modeled and further mapped to an automatically generated state space. Using generically formulated state space queries, the human error dasiarigiditypsila is detected.

Closed loop state space analysis and simulation for Cognitive Systems

The paper presents a novel technique for the integrated application of simulation and state space analysis within a single automated run of a coloured petri net (CPN) model in CPN Tools. Within that approach, the results of each alternating simulation or state space analysis phase are used for the initialization of the following phase, forming a closed loop between state space analysis and simulation. The technique is suitable for the design and analysis of certain properties of cognitive systems (CS) and other technical systems where simulated actions and state space based planning processes have to be executed alternately.

Designing for cooperation - mechanisms and procedures for air-ground integrated arrival management

An increasing number of tasks within the distributed air traffic management (ATM) system are currently being redesigned towards more cooperative and interactive planning processes involving decision of several agents (automated and human). In order to ensure that agents work together in an optimal manner it has to be achieved that the goals of the individual actors become properly aligned with the global system goal. That way the cooperative system seeks the optimization of the global objective through actors that seek the optimization of their individual self-objectives. Following this approach the paper introduces a game-theoretic perspective to the design of mechanisms for the guidance of arrival traffic at airports. Relevant incentive structures for individual actors are investigated on the basis of results from a distributed air-ground simulation model.