Development of Interface Requirements for Future Civilian Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS)

Abstract

In the current study methods from cognitive work analysis (CWA) were applied aiming to generate interface requirements for ground control stations (GCS) of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) operated in civilian controlled airspace. Civilian use of RPAS is a key interest of industry and concepts for integrating RPAS into civilian controlled airspace are required. The first two phases of CWA, namely work domain analysis (WDA) and control task analysis (ConTA), were conducted for an Airbus A320 operated in civilian controlled airspace in order to identify the constraints related to the work domain and to the activity to be carried out within the work system. Since aircraft systems of manned and remotely piloted aircraft have common purposes (i.e. maneuvering the aircraft through controlled airspace), the work system of a manned aircraft was selected for exploring constraints of the work system of future civilian RPAS operators. For the WDA an abstraction-decomposition-space (ADS) was created. Its decomposition dimension was developed in accordance to the ATA 100 chapter classification of aircraft systems. For the ConTA, a contextual activity template was created. Flight phases of a flight through civilian controlled airspace where mapped onto the horizontal axis, visualizing work situations. Work functions for each sub-system that was modelled within the ADS were derived and mapped onto the vertical axis. Finally, for reasonable combinations of work situations and work functions decision ladders were developed. They were used as a structured framework for identifying crucial information operators rely on when flying and maneuvering an aircraft through civilian controlled airspace and, most importantly, for identifying what information RPAS operators lack due to their remote location. Future steps will include careful evaluation of safety critical information, which essentially has to be considered in the development of requirements for GCS interfaces for operators of future civilian RPAS.