Human factors assessment of conflict resolution aid reliability and time pressure in future air traffic control

Abstract

Though it has been reported that air traffic controllers' (ATCos') performance improves with the aid of a conflict resolution aid (CRA), the effects of imperfect automation on CRA are so far unknown. The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of imperfect automation on conflict resolution. Twelve students with ATC knowledge were instructed to complete ATC tasks in four CRA conditions including reliable, unreliable and high time pressure, unreliable and low time pressure, and manual conditions. Participants were able to resolve the designated conflicts more accurately and faster in the reliable versus unreliable CRA conditions. When comparing the unreliable CRA and manual conditions, unreliable CRA led to better conflict resolution performance and higher situation awareness. Surprisingly, high time pressure triggered better conflict resolution performance as compared to the low time pressure condition. The findings from the present study highlight the importance of CRA in future ATC operations. Practitioner Summary: Conflict resolution aid (CRA) is a proposed automation decision aid in air traffic control (ATC). It was found in the present study that CRA was able to promote air traffic controllers' performance even when it was not perfectly reliable. These findings highlight the importance of CRA in future ATC operations.

Human factors evaluation of conflict resolution aid in future air traffic control

“…The automated Conflict Resolution Aid (CRA), which is a system that goes beyond detecting conflicts by recommending controller maneuvers to eliminate potential conflicts (Prevot, et al, 2012;Trapsilawati, Qu, Wickens, & Chen, 2015), is a component of the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). Currently, the CRA embedded in the TCAS is used only in airborne aircraft.…”

“…It is recommended that reliable, high-level automation applications should be provided for the stages of information acquisition, integration, and presentation and midlevel for decision selection in supporting all system functions as described in detail in the next section . Moreover, essentially important automation to be developed in the near future is the decision aids for conflict resolution and maintaining separation Prevot, et al 2012;Trapsilawati, et al 2015). The direction of the development should ensure proper separation between aircraft during all phases of flight in order to improve flight path safety and efficiency ).…”

“…Number of correct trials (e.g. conflict detection and conflict resolution trials) (Metzger & Parasuraman, 2001;2005;Rovira, et al 2010) and percentage of correct trials (Rovira, et al 2007;Trapsilawati, et al 2015) are examples of accuracy measures.…”

“…In the current research, the CRA aid that integrates the conflict detection and resolution system was used as a tool for investigating the above issues in humanautomation interaction (HAI). This choice allows us to examine the imperfections in the CRA system, in a manner that has rarely been done within the very small body of research that has examined controller performance with the CRA (Cabrall et al, 2014;Prevot, Homola, & Mercer, 2008;Prevot et al, 2012;Trapsilawati et al, 2015). Only Study 1 examined this issue of imperfect CRA and it was indeed found that the imperfect CRA aid assisted A TCOs relative to manual performance.…”

“…2013; Trapsilawati et al, 2015;, particularly if the CRA can avail more resources for the controller to monitor the raw data on the display. There was little evidence for whether such a tool leads to complacency in real world operations, and hence leads to a compromised response to automation failures or imperfections .…”