Michael J. Vincent

Human-in-the-loop experimental research for detect and avoid

This paper provides an overview of a Detect and Avoid (DAA) concept developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS), and provides results from human-in-the-loop experiments performed to investigate interoperability and acceptability issues associated with use of the concept with these vehicles and operations. The series of experiments was designed to incrementally assess critical elements of the new concept and the enabling technologies that will be required.

A Cognitive Task Analysis of Safety-Critical Launch Termination Systems

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been conducting an investigation of human interaction with critical elements of NASA’s Launch Termination System (LTS). This safety-critical system requires quick decision making on the part of highly trained users in order to maintain safe launch operations. A team of NASA evaluators has completed a detailed assessment aimed at improving the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of NASA’s Range Data Display System (RDDS), a key component of the LTS. The RDDS forms the vital man-machine link which ingests high volumes of system data in real-time and displays this data to NASA’s Range Safety personnel to enable them to assess launch vehicle trajectory and performance status. The RDDS displays the real-time state of the launch vehicle and its complex subsystems to users in order to support arm/destruct decisions (made by NASA’s Range Safety personnel) to facilitate safe launch operations. These decisions are highly time-sensitive, and users must act quickly in order to prevent serious injury or death and extensive damage to equipment or property. The NASA assessment team performed a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) to derive the user informational requirements needed to develop data driven, user information software requirements in support of a new RDDS software upgrade. The CTA was designed to address the unique aspects of this particular system, while focusing on the operational context within which the system is used by highly specialized personnel. This analysis and the resulting requirements form the first step in providing human factors guidance to software developers throughout the design, development, and fielding of the new RDDS software GUI. This paper will focus on the applied human factors methods and techniques employed, how these methods and techniques were used to derive user information design requirements, the lessons learned from this activity, and areas for future work. The authors intend to provide human factors practitioners with an example of how CTA methods and techniques may be adapted to meet the particular needs of a project, with special consideration given to the design of safety-critical systems.

UAS Detect and Avoid – Alert Times and Pilot Performance in Remaining Well Clear

With the rapid growth of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), NASA was called upon to examine crucial operational and safety concerns regarding the integration of UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and industry. Key research efforts paper focused on understanding and developing requirements for Detect and Avoid (DAA) systems and making sure they are interoperable with Collision Avoidance (CA) technologies. These requirements detail necessary performance of a DAA system designed to help the UAS pilot maintain DAA Well Clear (DWC) from intruder aircraft so that safe separation is retained. NASA Langley’s Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) simulation study known as Collision Avoidance, Self-Separation, and Alerting Times (CASSAT) addressed these DAA requirements in a two-phase study. The first phase examined eleven active air traffic controllers. The second phase, addressed in this paper, examined twelve pilots’ interactions with DAA systems at simulated UAS ground control stations (GCS).

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Detect and Avoid System: End-to-End Verification and Validation Simulation Study of Minimum Operations Performance Standards for Integrating Unmanned Aircraft into the National Airspace System

As Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) make their way to mainstream aviation operations within the National Airspace System (NAS), research efforts are underway to develop a safe and effective environment for their integration into the NAS. Detect and Avoid (DAA) systems are required to account for the lack of “eyes in the sky” due to having no human on-board the aircraft. The technique, results, and lessons learned from a detailed End-to-End Verification and Validation (E2-V2) simulation study of a DAA system representative of RTCA SC-228’s proposed Phase I DAA Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS), based on specific test vectors and encounter cases, will be presented in this paper.