Recent guidance from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration suggests that self separation needs to be a component of an Unmanned Aircraft System Sense and Avoid solution. The greater time horizon associated with self separation allows for pilot-in-the-loop operation, and, in fact, the nature of self separation demands more pilot involvement. The ability to effectively conduct pilot-in-the-loop self separation will be critically dependent on decision aides and advanced displays that allow pilots to make accurate and timely maneuvering decisions. This paper starts with a presentation of eight criteria that should be considered when defining requirements for a future separation assurance and collision avoidance system. Using these criteria, it is illustrated how the concept of conflict probing and the associated scalability enables a range of possible implementations, specifically matched to the available data, interfaces and displays.
Recognizing the need to improve the situation awareness of unmanned aircraft system pilots to surrounding air traffic, multiple operators of unmanned aircraft systems have begun to introduce Cockpit Displays of Traffic Information into their ground control stations. In some cases, these displays have been augmented with moving maps or synthetic vision to enhance the pilots' comprehension of the airspace. To identify and classify specific information and processing needs for Sense and Avoid functions, a 3-level framework is proposed for conflict awareness, analogous to existing frameworks for situation awareness. Existing traffic displays focus on the depiction of traffic (position, and sometimes also velocity and direction), leaving it to the pilot to determine whether a conflict exists now or somewhere in the future. In terms of the proposed framework for conflict awareness, such displays support a Level 1 conflict awareness. To achieve higher levels of conflict awareness, the pilot must be able to project the future states of the surrounding traffic and understand the consequences. This level of knowledge can assist the pilot in anticipating potential conflicts and then maneuvering to obviate a time-critical conflict from ever developing. This paper describes the development and implementation of a Cockpit Display of Traffic Information that supports a Level 3 conflict awareness through the use of conflict probing. To compensate for the inherent limitations of a plan-view Cockpit Display of Traffic Information in terms of providing directly interpretable information about the vertical dimension, a Vertical Profile Display is introduced as an additional situational awareness tool to assist the pilot in identifying and resolving conflicts. Finally, to demonstrate the utility of conflict probing and the Vertical Profile Display as part of a Conflict Prediction and Display System to allow pilot involvement in the Sense and Avoid function of self separation, the paper provides an example using a multi-intruder encounter.
The research described in this paper explores the addition of conformally integrated traffic probes into an egocentric Synthetic Vision (SV) Primary Flight Display (PFD). The underlying thought is that, although the traffic that is predicted to cause a future loss of separation may not lie within the field of view of the display, the location where the loss of separation is predicted to occur always will. Hence, rather than focusing on the depiction of traffic, which contributes to level 2 Situation Awareness (SA), the concept pursues spatially integrated depiction of the airspace where a loss of separation is predicted. This provides readily actionable conflict information, relieving pilots from the traffic position and conflict estimation task and contributing to level 3 SA. The paper describes the integration of the data from the traffic probe into an SV PFD. The advantages of the concept will be illustrated using several traffic conflict scenarios, including an overtaking scenario involving unmanned aircraft. Given that unmanned aircraft may be markedly slower than manned aircraft which operate within the same airspace, a spatially integrated depiction of airspace where a future loss of separation is predicted, can help to preserve safety in classes of airspace that accommodate both manned and unmanned aircraft. Additionally, examples are provided illustrating how traffic probes can support pilots in monitoring the conformance of traffic to the priority rules of 14 CFR 91.113.
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