Prototype for a mixed separation air traffic control user interface |
Olafur Freyr Hjalmsson
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| Abstract | This Masters thesis of engineering discusses issues related to aircraft separation in an air traffic control environment where mixed separation standards are applied. The simulated test environment contains aircraft with and without radar coverage as well as aircraft equipped with ADS-B equipment. The feature complete air traffic control training simulator Amelia was modified to serve as an interactive prototype used for usability testing with appropriate users. Amelia was provided by Tern Systems Inc. along with their invaluable expert advice. Specific additional features were designed to carry out the required tasks, but as it turned out some of these had to be abandoned due to time constraints. The full design is presented here along with what became the actual implementation. Despite these problems the graphical user interface necessary to carry out usability testing was completed and the missing parts were included using mockup screenshots printed to paper.
The Icelandic Civil Aviation Authority participated in the usability testing where seven active duty air traffic controllers volunteered to give their impressions of the modifications. Even though their work environment is different from Amelia on some key points, they agreed that it was sufficiently similar so that they had no significant problems working with Amelia. The work environment is introduced here and the differences are pointed out. Two rounds of testing took place in the month of February 2005, using the modified Amelia prototype, where additionalmodifications were made based on feedback after the initial round and tested in the second round.
Concluding from the results of the two usability tests the following recommendations are made: Each individual aircraft on the air traffic controller situation display should indicate which separation standards apply to it at the moment. The separation requirements of each aircraft should be easy to show and focus should be on giving precise information regarding separation between exactly two aircraft. The situation display system should be able to highlight the area where a conflict occurs as soon as it may be detected. |
| Type | Master's thesis [Academic thesis] |
| Year | 2005 |
| Publisher | Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark, DTU |
| Address | Richard Petersens Plads, Building 321, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby |
| Series | IMM-Thesis-2005-40 |
| Note | Supervised by Jens Thyge Kristensen |
| Electronic version(s) | [ps] |
| BibTeX data | [bibtex] |
| IMM Group(s) | Computer Science & Engineering |