Improved User Acceptance During Stepwise Air Traffic Control Display Functionality Introduction

Kurzfassung

Today, air traffic controllers (ATCO) mainly use radar screens with hardly any visual assistance functionality to guide air traffic safely in the terminal maneuvering area. In the future, new requirements will have to be fulfilled by controllers. The distance-based air traffic control (ATC) approach will be shifted via a time- and a trajectory- to a performance-based approach of operation methods. This goes along with greater parts of monitoring tasks for controllers and is difficult to handle with current displays. However, there is potential by using air-ground data link negotiated four dimensional trajectories, flight management system data on ground and more precise navigation capabilities. These assumptions can be considered in advance for new and enhanced controller display concepts. In contrast to current broad integrations of new controller working position systems and displays at a single point in time, systems will have to be more flexible in the future. To avoid extensive system user trainings and to increase user acceptance simultaneously, new functionalities can be integrated in few small consecutive steps instead of one great step. This paper addresses a concept of a migration tolerant human machine interface for approach controllers with a series of learning steps between prototypically implemented display revisions. The radar based display was modified using design metaphors. Nine iterative changes included marking of distances in Nautical miles on standard arrival routes and symbols for cardinal direction in the first two steps. Third and fourth step comprised straightening displayed routes and homogenized route angles. The fifth display revision led to a rectangular structure of routes, whereas the whole view was rotated into a runway dependent horizontal view in stage six. Afterwards, the merge point appearance was adapted and performance-coded aircraft symbols were introduced. The last revision included a parallel and screen border orthogonal route structure for unidirectional movement of aircraft on the resulting monitoring display. In the course of adaptations, controller roles also changed. Monitoring controllers using the resulting complexity reduced display are assisted by executive controllers with conventional radar displays. During an evaluation study for the display set with ten controllers, participants were split into two groups. The first group had to work with all ten display revisions and therefore experienced nine transition steps. The second group only went through two transitions between the state-of-the-art display revision zero, the intermediate stage number five, and the final display layout. The comparison of system usability and transition questionnaire ratings should reveal user acceptance differences between these groups. Results showed that participants’ usability and learnability ratings were quite similar for display revision five comparing both groups, but dropped down for the group with only two transitions when using display revision nine. The adequate dimension of learning steps between all ten implemented display revisions was hit quite well due to controllers’ feedback. It was therefore shown that introducing new ATC display functionalities in small steps is superior against a one-step approach. Following, the migration tolerant display steps are an eligible concept to face future requirements of the air traffic management domain.