Using Distributed Simulation to Investigate Human-Autonomy Teaming

Single-pilot airline operations: Designing the aircraft may be the easy part

“…• Remote Pilot: This is the simplest concept. In this case the ground-based pilot has the capability of exerting control of the aircraft, supplementing or replacing the on-board pilot if required [57]. They are available to the pilot at any point during the flight (including pre-flight and shut down) and operate on a 1:1 basis (when needed) with the aircraft, but normally, the aircraft operates only under the control of the on-board pilot.…”

“…• Harbour Pilot: This is similar in concept to its marine equivalent. The Harbour Pilot possesses knowledge of a well-defined terminal area airspace, its procedures and operations, and provides real-time support to the single pilot during departures and arrivals [47,57,58]. They may take control of the aircraft, if required.…”

“…The potential for increased workload (and specifically instances of workload peaks) has been identified as a safety concern for SiPO [11][12][13] and was recognised as a hazard in the operation of SJs [89] as was the removal of the second pilot (Pilot Monitoring) in their roles as an error checker and as a counter to pilot incapacitation. Using the harbour pilot configuration [47,57,58] a number of simulated flight trials showed that flight deck workload was within acceptable bounds and situation awareness was high. Harbour pilot workload was low [58].…”

Single Pilot Operations in Domestic Commercial Aviation

“…The HAT concept was evaluated with a tablet-based rerouting and divert system (the Autonomous Constrained Flight Planner; ACFP) that was installed in the cockpit of a high-fidelity simulator (see Cover, Reichlen, Matessa, & Schnell, 2018; Matessa et al, 2018; Strybel et al, 2018). In the study, air transport pilots flew simulated scenarios in SPO where they encountered off-nominal situations (e.g., weather, medical emergency), requiring them to make divert decisions.…”

“…The findings from the research highlighted in this article have several implications for the design of tools in support of SPO, such as CRM and HAT, and for training operators on their use. As aforementioned in the Ground-based Operational Concepts section, a suite of tools was developed to assist the onboard captain (e.g., Lachter, Brandt, et al, 2014; Matessa et al, 2018; Strybel et al, 2017). The tools were designed based on interviews with pilots about functional components, and they incorporated recommendations for good automation and CRM (e.g., Cummings et al, 2016; Mosier & Fischer, 2014; Parasuraman et al, 2008) and HAT (Shively et al, 2017).…”