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NASA DAG-TM – Distributed Air Ground Traffic Management

Feb 052012

Credit: NASA Ames Research Center
The goal of DAG-TM was to propose a prototype of an air/ground system with a human-centered approach. That is, the research team reevaluated the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders to enhance user flexibility and user efficiency with, for example, user-preferred routing to increase airspace capacity without impeding upon safety or airspace accessibility.

Within the concept elements tested, pilots flew desktop simulators and were responsible for the following tasks:

1) maintaining separation
2) meeting their assigned RTA (Required Time of Arrival)
3) modifying flight path for traffic and RTA compliance
4) sending and acknowledging trajectory changes
5) self-spacing behind a designated lead aircraft.

Several tools were provided to aid pilots in accomplishing these new tasks and to meet their responsibilities in the simulations. The Flight Display Research Laboratory team contributed the Ames 3D CSD which provided pilots with the ability to achieve the tasks outlined above.

NextGen – Effective Human Automation Cooperation

Aviation No Responses »

Feb 052012

Credit: NASA Ames Research Center Airspace Operations Laboratory
Created by Dr Thomas Prevot
http://humansystems.arc.nasa.gov/groups/AOL/
The Airspace Operations Lab evaluates air traffic management (ATM) concepts and explores human-system interaction issues in a high-fidelity human-in-the-loop simulation environment designed to allow rapid prototyping of NextGen concepts. This environment allows simulations of aircraft, ATM systems and communication infrastructure for both current day operations and a variety of future, highly automated concepts. Controller workstations are realistic emulations of today’s en route, Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) and oceanic systems. They also include a full suite of advanced decision support tools and automated functions for conflict detection and resolution, trajectory planning, scheduling and sequencing, and managing advanced levels of airborne equipage.

The main goal of the research in the AOL is to evaluate future ATM systems and associated human-system interactions. One of the main challenges of examining future ATM systems is that future operations are generally underspecified in their descriptions of system functionality, procedures, performance measurements, and system status measurements (workload, amount of communication, and similar measurements). More traditional approaches to human factors that examine existing operations by carefully gathering and assessing information related to human performance issues in well-defined systems are not best suited to analyze underspecified future ATM systems.

Our findings help the ATM community to understand potential human performance and human system interactions issues related to NextGen concepts. The results can lead to better understanding of roles and responsibilities for human operators and automation in future ATM systems.

Distributed Human-in-the-Loop Research

http://humansystems.arc.nasa.gov/groups/AOL/factsheets/Palmer_DistHumanInLoop.pdf