Evaluation of an Electronic Flight Bag with Integrated Routing and Runway Incursion Detection Functions

2009 IEEE/AIAA 28th Digital Avionics Systems Conference

Koeners

Houtman³

2009

Self Cite

In earlier work, the safety benefit that results from the availability of the taxi route in an on-board airport electronic map system such as an electronic flight bag has been demonstrated. This benefit can be attributed to the explicit depiction of the route and the conformance monitor that serves as an additional safety net by providing alerts to the pilot in case of deviations from the route or a clearance violation. In this paper, it is illustrated that even without the availability of a route, there is a potential for an increase in safety beyond that which is already obtained from the depiction of an ownship-referenced map. The basis for the concept is that, even without an explicitly defined taxi route, it is still possible to detect certain types of navigation errors. The concept utilizes the current position and heading of the aircraft, a topologic description of the airport and a set of rules that define attributes to the topology. This paper discusses the concept, design and implementation. Based on available incident data, it was determined that for a majority of the incidents that were caused by a navigation error, the pilots would have been timely provided with an additional cue on the map that emphasizes the taxiways and/or runway that should not be entered from the current taxiway.

Section: Figure 1 Classification Of Deviations From the Intended Pathmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…As the basis, the EFB electronic map used in earlier research [3] is used. This EFB application already supports the use of databases that describe the taxiway and runways as a set of connected nodes.…”

Section: Design and Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concept, design and evaluation of a rule-based alerting scheme for airport navigation

2009 IEEE/AIAA 28th Digital Avionics Systems Conference

Koeners

Houtman³

2009

Self Cite

“…Besides the improved situation awareness (SA) resulting from the integrated depiction of the route, the possibility to run a conformance monitor can significantly contribute to safety. Earlier research has explored the potential of aircraft-based route-conformance monitoring for airport navigation [3]. In this research, the route-conformance monitoring function, hosted on an experimental Electronic Flight Bag (EFB), was evaluated in a simulated operation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taxi route input - specification or selection?

2008 IEEE/AIAA 27th Digital Avionics Systems Conference

Roefs

Koeners

et al. 2008

Self Cite

When providing the pilot with a means to enter a taxi route into an onboard system, readback of the route as displayed by the system allows input errors to be caught. The resulting increase in integrity can only be realized, if the delay between receiving the instructions from ground control and the readback is sufficiently small. Earlier research has explored a taxi route input concept using speech recognition and a concept based on a sequential selection of the successive taxiways and runways. Both concepts were based on pilots specifying all segments that are part of the route. Although rather efficient, the time required by both concepts for route entry limited the possibility to perform the readback from a display of the route. A translation of instructions was necessitated by the fact that the order of the taxiway identifiers in the instruction sometimes varies and that redundant identifiers are often omitted. The input concept described in the current paper does not require the pilot to sequentially enter the full route. Instead, it uses information on common (often occurring) routes combined with input from the pilot to perform an inference of the desired route. This hybrid input combines a specification approach with a selection approach, allowing the pilot to enter a complete route by selecting and/or specifying only a few of its segments. An evaluation of the concept using a simulation of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, combined with actual ground control instructions, showed that it outperformed the earlier two implementations in terms of efficiency and flexibility.

“…Providing pilots during taxiing with an ownship-centered moving map display of the airport with integrated routing instructions, enhances their position and route awareness. In a previous study (Theunissen, Koeners, Roefs, Ahl, and Bleeker;2005), an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) application showing such a display has been tested and positively evaluated. In that evaluation study, route instructions from Air Traffic Control (ATC) were sent to the EFB by means of a digital data link.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Airport Layout Information to Improve Automatic Speech Recognition for Digitizing Taxi Instructions

Roefs

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

Jinkins³

et al. 2006

During taxiing, an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) showing airport and route-data can support pilots. In the present study, the possibility of using a Voice Recognition System (VRS) to enable pilots to enter route instructions, for usage in situations where digital data link is not available, was investigated. The potential of techniques that utilize information on airport layout to detect and correct voice recognition errors was explored. Experiment I investigated the accuracy rates that can be achieved with the basic VRS. Although high, the resulting accuracy was insufficient, for safety reasons as well as user-acceptance of the system. A configurable system that interprets user utterances based on possible taxi routes on the airport, was designed and implemented. Experiment II explored the potential improvement of the different configuration options on error detection and correction performance. With one of the configurations, an increase of 42% in overall recognition rates was achieved.