Panel 3: NextGen Human-Computer Function Allocation
Friday 5 November 2010 — 11:00-12:30
Moderator: Leighton Quon, NASA, U.S.A.
Panelists:
Paul Krois, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S.A.
Nigel Makins, EUROCONTROL, SESAR-NextGen Liaison at FAA, France
Akbar Sultan, NASA Dep Program Director, Airspace Systems, U.S.A.
Savita Verma, NASA, U.S.A.
ABSTRACT
Function Allocation is key to an effective transformation to NextGen and SESAR. The introduction of new airborne and ground-based technologies will place emphasis on the changing roles and interactions between pilots, controllers and automated systems. Redefining roles or defining new roles clearly will enable smooth timely transition to these new technologies.
This session will explore different aspects of requirements and interactions for the transition to NextGen and SESAR. Discussion will range from the general context of NextGen and SESAR needs to some specific investigations of future concept and technology function allocation studies.
PANELIST POSITION STATEMENTS
Nigel Makins
In 2007 the SESAR Operational Concept Taskforce wrote the following Humans will be central in the future European ATM system as managers and decision-makers; In the ATM Target Concept it is recognised that humans (with appropriate skills and competences, duly authorised) will constitute the core of the future European ATM System’s operations. However, to accommodate the expected traffic increase, an advanced level of automation support for the humans will be required. The basic principles of an automation strategy have been established within the SESAR Definition Phase. The nature of human roles and tasks within the future system will necessarily change. This will affect system design, staff selection, training (especially for unusual situations and degraded mode of operations), competence requirements and relevant
regulations.
Recruitment, training, staffing and competence implications have been evaluated and will be considered when the SESAR Development Phase has progressed sufficiently to support the change of the roles and responsibilities of all the actors within the ATM System up to a successful implementation of the ATM Target Concept. The task from 2010 over the next 4 years is to build the SESAR concept according to those principles and following those initial design choices. Key functions such as separation assurance must be developed such that intervention capabilities (who will intervene if separation is about to be infringed – controller, pilot, automation) must be addressed through experimentation and safety analysis to ensure that the human centered philosophy to functional distribution is appropriately implemented. Understanding how critical human skills degrade with time, how vigilance reduces with lack of engagement (monitoring) are typical of the key issues that must be addressed as SESAR explores its choices on functional allocation.
In 1978 Nigel Makins joined NATS UK as TWR & APR controller. In ‘92 he joined EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre. Designing controller HMI e.g. Electronic Tower Strips for Oslo and helping establish a part-task experimental methodology. Nigel obtained a postgraduate diploma in HCI in 1993. During ‘97-‘98 he worked with Boeing ATM team in Seattle, incl. CAFT team with Russ Chew. From ‘02 he worked on European Commission ATM programmes as Validation Manager and became responsible for establishing a methodology to Validate R&D outputs (EOCVM) – now part of SESAR Systems Engineering Methodology. Since Feb ’09 he has been EUROCONTROL’s SESAR Liaison person in Washington DC – main emphasis on global harmonization especially of operational issues.
Akbar Sultan
This talk will attempt to look at determination of the functional allocation in air traffic management between airborne vs. ground and human vs. automation based
methods from a cost-benefit and law of diminishing returns perspective. The goal of the presentation will be to spark audience questions and discussions by deliberately trying to view the research objectives through a more simplistic viewpoint.
Akbar Sultan is the Deputy Director of the Airspace Systems Program within the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at the NASA HQ. The Airspace Systems Program is responsible for leading NASA's NextGen ATM research portfolio. Previously, Mr. Sultan served the program office at NASA Headquarters as the Technical Integration Manager for the Airspace Systems Program. In that role, Mr. Sultan was responsible for the development of the NASA/FAA Research Transition Teams as well as serving as the liaison between ARMD and JPDO. Mr. Sultan has 12 years of experience in leading and conducting research in air traffic management. Before joining the program office, Mr. Sultan was assigned as a project manager in the Portfolio Management Division of the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) located in Washington, D.C., and led the development of operational improvement roadmaps in support of the goals for the NextGen. Prior to his assignment in Washington DC, Mr. Sultan was the Software V&V, Configuration, and Release Manager for the Center-TRACON Automation System (CTAS) at NASA Ames Research Center. Mr. Sultan holds a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering and Bachelor of Science degrees in Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering.
Paul Krois
While NextGen poses no major changes in the roles and responsibilities of pilots and controllers in the mid-term, major changes are foreseen to the methods and supporting mechanisms by which pilots and controllers will operate. These changes are highlighted by the use of data communications for trajectory operations, the increased use of the flight management system (FMS) and flight deck systems in executing merging and spacing, the delivery of conflict resolution advisories to the controller by decision support automation, and the use of 3D RNAV/RNP. These changes pose significant challenges to human factors considerations including with information requirements for controllers and pilots in use of new technologies, automation and associated procedures; risk of introduction of new latent errors and potential for mode awareness errors; guidance for the design of display features and interoperability between air and ground systems; and training including recurrent training to mitigate deskilling such as in relation to non-normal scenarios.
Paul Krois has managed aviation human factors research and acquisition programs since 1988 and joined the Federal Aviation Administration in 1999. As the Program Director of the Human Factors Research and Engineering Group, he leads the office in planning the portfolio of research for effective human system integration with the new technologies, system, applications, and procedures comprising the Next Generation Air Transportation System or NextGen. In 2007, he received the NextGen and Operations Planning Vice President Award for Excellence for NextGen business management development. Paul has a doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology from Colorado State University.
Savvy Verma
Simultaneous approaches require that a controller pair aircraft at some point in time
before approach. Most concepts assume the role of the controller for pairing aircraft and
no tools or displays are existent in the current ATM world for controllers to perform this task. This research evaluated the role of the controller to provide insight into the functional allocation of the roles between the human and automation provided by a pairing tool used to aid simultaneous approaches. The concept for simultaneous approaches assumed that the parallel runways are 750 ft apart, and the objective of the concept is to maintain visual meteorological capacities under instrument meteorological conditions by providing appropriate procedures and displays. Also, as per the concept the aircraft fly the last 12 nmi of the flight in a formation where the following aircraft is exactly 15 s behind lead aircraft. This 15 s precise spacing was chosen because it falls within the wake safe zone behind the leader and is also considered somewhat for traffic.
Thus in all the conditions the sector controller’s goal was to bring the aircraft 15 sec behind the leader at the coupling point, which is 12 nmi from the threshold. The procedures for this pairing tool under different levels of automation were investigated.
Savvy Verma is an aeronautics engineer/researcher at NASA Ames for the last 10 years. She has an MS in Human factors from San Jose State University. She worked on several projects at NASA Ames including fast time simulations, human performance modeling and several human in-the-loop studies. In the last few years, her work has focused on procedures for simultaneous approaches in the terminal area.
