HMI Design for Remote Co-Pilot Ground Control Station enabling Single Pilot Operations

Abstract

Single Pilot or Reduced Crew operations offer benefits cost savings, improvements in crew scheduling and in aircraft availability. However, safety concerns have so far prevented the introduction of single-pilot flights in commercial aviation. Introducing a remote Co-pilot station or even a remote-copilot center addresses these concerns. The presented study investigated possible impacts of transitioning from conventional to remote aircraft control while simultaneously decreasing the pilot-aircraft ratio. By applying methods from cognitive work analysis, possible reallocations of functions and the impact on the availability of information relevant for decision making when executing function related tasks were explored. The work domain of a conventional pilot was used as a basis for exploring the work domain of a remote pilot. An abstraction-decomposition-space (ADS) was developed for a typical commercial aircraft. Aircraft systems were decomposed systematically by categorizing them into the four categories aviate, navigate, communicate and supply & protection for systems according to their respective function. Based on this decomposition, HMI for a remote Co-Pilot Station has been designed and evaluated.