Thierry Poulain

AMANDA V3: Toward a Common Workspace between Air Traffic Controllers

This paper presents the different tools developed in the LAMIH, in optics to assist air traffic controllers in their tasks, to decrease their workloads, and to enable them to support the ceaseless increase of the traffic. Common philosophy to all these tools is to preserve the controllers in the loop: we do not try to develop tools entirely automatic. The platform AMANDA V2 made it possible to set up and to evaluate a common workspace, which allows the two controllers of a sector to cooperate and to share the same representation of their traffic and conflicts. This space maintains common situation awareness. This tool was very appreciated by professional controllers and we now wish to extend this principle to the co-operation between two planning controllers of two adjacent sectors. It is what we present in this paper which begins with a presentation of the ATC then a point on the platforms of the laboratory and particularly AMANDA V2, to conclude with the objectives of AMANDA V3.

Task allocation in air traffic control involving a common workspace and a cooperative support system

Abstract For several years, the need for air traffic control has been increasing steadily, rising an estimated 2 to 5% each year. In order to keep planes and their passengers safe, various support systems have been studied. Our conviction is that it is necessary to design a truly cooperative tool that will allow air traffic controllers to create a real team synergy with the tool. This paper presents an experimental investigation in which air traffic controllers delegate certain tasks to a system that is able to take human strategies into account in resolving aerial conflicts. The interactions between the decision-makers—both the human operators and the support system—take place through use of a common workspace whose architecture is based on Rasmussens problem-solving model. The results concerning how the air traffic controllers used the tool and how tasks were distributed between the controllers and the support system are reported, and the perspectives for future research are presented.

Towards a Multi-sector cooperation in Air-Traffic Control supported by a Meta- Common Workspace

Abstract For several years, the need for air traffic control has been continuously increasing. In order to maintain aircraft safety, different support tools have been built and assessed by our laboratory. The professional controllers who have tested these tools have made various criticisms. Our conviction is that it is necessary to design a more cooperative tool that would allow “true team work” to be established between air traffic controllers and their support tools, by making the support tool part of the team rather than a substitute for air traffic controllers. This paper presents a new support tool based on the delegation of tasks and a common workspace. The support tools’ assessments with professional controllers have highlighted a workload decrease due to the delegation and the sharing of information. In order to improve the support system, it is necessary to extend the common workspace to the adjacent sector of control.

Decision analysis of Air Traffic Controller in order to propose decision support systems

The Air Traffic Controller must take important decisions in each moment. They manipulate a lot of data and parameters. With the increase of traffic it is more difficult to take decision rapidly and safely. In this paper we try to provide some tools able to help the Controller in their work. To do that it is necessary to access to their decision-making process. We propose an approach. This approach is composed of a multiple criteria methodology, and interviews to obtain data. We present next an analysis of these interviews. This analysis show what we can extract from this technique: criteria, preferences for the multiple criteria methodology, and how we use it for propose some tools. The following step will be to integrate the results of these analyses to our system.