Effects of Unwanted Tracking Boxes in a Remote Tower Control Environment

Abstract

In the field of air transport operations, “Remote Tower” is a fast-growing concept offering more cost-efficient Air Traffic Services (ATS), mainly for small aerodromes with low traffic volumes. It primarily relies on camera sensors at the aerodrome, producing a video stream, which is relayed to an ATS facility situated anywhere, where it is displayed on visual presentation devices, e.g. panorama video screens, in order to replace the direct out-of-the-Tower-window view. This offers the opportunity to provide ATS to more than one airport from a centralized ATS facility, also called Remote Tower Center. By such a center the critical resource “Air Traffic Control Officer” (ATCO) can be utilized much more cost-efficient since the ATCO now can control multiple low density aerodromes, sequentially or even simultaneously. To maintain or even increase the ATCO’s situational awareness augmentation features are introduced, such as automated tracking of the traffic the ATCO is responsible for. However, a tracking function is never reliable by 100% and with reference to the signal detection theory gains and losses are to be expected. This paper investigates the minimum performance parameter of a tracking function in a Remote Tower environment to gain ATCO’s acceptance and positive effects on her/his situational awareness and workload. In a human-in-the-loop real time simulation seven ATCOs performed a realistic traffic scenario. The study was conducted at Remote Tower laboratory at DLR in Braunschweig. By four test conditions the performance of the visual tracking was varied by the number of unwanted visual tracking occurrences: (1) no visual tracking (baseline), (2) low, (3) medium, and (4) high. The findings show that ATCOs very much appreciate visual tracking augmentations. ATCOs can easier detect critical traffic situation, which increases their situational awareness and safety. Further on, acceptance is rather high and workload on a moderate level and both parameters behave rather robust, even when the performance of the tracking function decreases.