Impact of UAS with Low Size, Weight, and Power Sensors on Air Traffic Controllers’ Performance and Acceptability Ratings

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-158
Author(s):  
Kim-Phuong L. Vu ◽  
Jonathan VanLuven ◽  
Timothy Diep ◽  
Vernol Battiste ◽  
Summer Brandt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Traffic ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Detection Range ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Air Traffic Controllers ◽  
Low Altitude ◽  
Sector Performance ◽  
The Impact

A human-in-the-loop simulation was conducted to evaluate the impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) with low size, weight, and power (SWaP) sensors operating in a busy, low-altitude sector. Use of low SWaP sensors allow for UAS to perform detect-and-avoid (DAA) maneuvers against non-transponding traffic in the sector. Depending upon the detection range of the low SWaP sensor, the UAS pilot may or may not have time to coordinate with air traffic controllers (ATCos) prior to performing the DAA maneuver. ATCo’s sector performance and subjective ratings of acceptability were obtained in four conditions that varied in UAS-ATCo coordination (all or none) prior to the DAA maneuver and workload (higher or lower). For performance, ATCos committed more losses of separation in high than low workload conditions. They also had to make more flight plan changes to manage the UAS when the UAS pilot did not coordinate DAA maneuvers compared to when they did coordinate the maneuvers prior to execution. Although the ATCos found the DAA procedures used by the UAS in the study to be acceptable, most preferred the UAS pilot to coordinate their DAA maneuvers with ATCos prior to executing them.

scholarly journals Impact of the Frequency of Lost Links on Air Traffic Controllers’ Performance and Acceptability Ratings

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-125
Author(s):  
Kim-Phuong L. Vu ◽  
Jillian Keeler ◽  
Lisa Fern ◽  
Natassia Mattoon ◽  
R. Conrad Rorie ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Traffic ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft System ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Air Traffic Controllers ◽  
Expiration Time ◽  
Sector Performance ◽  
Aircraft System

A human-in-the-loop simulation was conducted to determine the effect of the frequency of loss link declarations on air traffic controllers’ sector performance and their acceptability ratings of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations. We used a short versus long transaction expiration time (TET) to derive the number of lost links in a condition, with the shorter TET resulting in twice as many lost link declarations compared to the long TET. We found that long TET conditions led to better performance than the short TET conditions. Moreover, controllers preferred the long TETs compared to the short ones.

Human Factors Evaluation of Conflict Resolution Advisories for Air Traffic Control in the En Route Domain

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-98
Author(s):  
Sehchang Hah ◽  
Ben Willems ◽  
Gary Mueller ◽  
Daniel R. Johnson ◽  
Hyun Woo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Traffic Control ◽  
Air Traffic Control ◽  
Simulation Experiment ◽  
Air Traffic ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Air Traffic Controllers

In this paper, we report results of a human-in-the-loop simulation experiment that evaluated how Conflict Resolution Advisories (CRA) affected en route air traffic controllers’ performance. Twelve current en route Certified Professional Controllers from Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) participated in the experiment. Results showed that controllers used CRA menus significantly more often than Baseline menus. They also spent more time interacting with the CRA menus than with the Baseline menus. Most of the participants’ subjective ratings favored the CRA, but they also pointed out a few features to be improved.

scholarly journals A multimodal and signals fusion approach for assessing the impact of stressful events on Air Traffic Controllers

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianluca Borghini ◽  
Gianluca Di Flumeri ◽  
Pietro Aricò ◽  
Nicolina Sciaraffa ◽  
Stefano Bonelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Traffic ◽  
Stressful Events ◽  
Air Traffic Controllers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Fusion Approach

scholarly journals Human Factors Contributions to the Development of Standards for Displays of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Support of Detect-and-Avoid

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim-Phuong L. Vu ◽  
Robert Conrad Rorie ◽  
Lisa Fern ◽  
Robert Jay Shively
Keyword(s):  
Human Factors ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
National Airspace System ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Aircraft Systems ◽  
Human Systems Integration ◽  
High Level ◽  
Evidence Based Guidelines

Objective The aim is to provide a high-level synthesis of human factors research that contributed to the development of detect-and-avoid display requirements for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Background The integration of UAS into the U.S. National Airspace System is a priority under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Modernization and Reform Act. For UAS to have routine access to the National Airspace System, UAS must have detect-and-avoid capabilities. One human factors challenge is to determine how to display information effectively to remote pilots for performing detect-and-avoid tasks. Method A high-level review of research informing the display requirements for UAS detect-and-avoid is provided. In addition, description of the contributions of human factors researchers in the writing of the requirements is highlighted. Results Findings from human-in-the-loop simulations are used to illustrate how evidence-based guidelines and requirements were established for the display of information to assist pilots in performing detect-and-avoid. Implications for human factors are discussed. Conclusion Human factors researchers and engineers made many contributions to generate the data used to justify the detect-and-avoid display requirements. Human factors researchers must continue to be involved in the development of standards to ensure that requirements are evidence-based and take into account human operator performance and human factors principles and guidelines. Application The research presented in this paper is relevant to the design of UAS, the writing of standards and requirements, and the work in human–systems integration.

scholarly journals Impact of Job Stress on Job Satisfaction among Air Traffic Controllers of Civil Aviation Authority: An Empirical Study from Pakistan

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Iqbal ◽  
Muhammad Adnan Waseem
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Job Stress ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Air Traffic ◽  
Civil Aviation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Air Traffic Controllers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of job stress on job satisfaction of employees and also to find out the drivers for the job stress, which contribute to create job stress which ultimately negatively affect job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – The study is mainly based on review of the existing literature and collection of data through an adopted questionnaire survey, conducted from the selected sample of Air Traffic Controllers of Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority. A total of 134 questionnaires were distributed among the sample which is selected using the technique of cluster sampling. 122 respondents returned the questionnaire, which are utilized for the analysis purpose. Findings – The results of the current study indicate that there is a negative relationship between job stress and job satisfaction. Those air traffic controllers who had high level of job stress had low job satisfaction. Research limitations – This research paper is based on a specific case of Air Traffic Controllers of Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority. So the results are applicable specifically to Air Traffic Controllers of Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority or other fields in the same industry. A quantitative methodology is used to investigate the problem. Future research can investigate the problem by using a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methodology. Practical implications – The practical implications of the paper include implementation of the results provided by researcher to decrease the employees’ level of stress and increase job satisfaction level. Originality/value – The study is conducted first time in the field specifically highlighting the stress issue. It can be a base for the future research in this area.   Keywords – Job Stress, Job Satisfaction, Air Traffic Controllers

Evaluating the Impact of Deploying Unrestricted Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhinav Saxena ◽  
Indranil Roychoudhury ◽  
Christian Neukom ◽  
Greg Pisanich ◽  
Alex Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ◽  
Aircraft Systems ◽  
The Impact

An agent-based modeling approach for simulating the impact of small unmanned aircraft systems on future battlefields

2020 ◽  
pp. 154851292096390
Author(s):  
Carsten Christensen ◽  
John Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Implementation Strategies ◽  
Agent Based Modeling ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
Small Unit ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Aircraft Systems ◽  
The Impact

The increasing proliferation of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) is forcing a paradigm shift in military doctrine surrounding counter-sUAS and sUAS deployment tactics. This work describes an agent-based model that incorporates established infantry small unit tactics with the ability to deploy sUASs to aid in surveillance and indirect fire targeting. The model is based on current military doctrine and real warfighter experiences and is presented as a foundation from which additional simulation capabilities and analyses may be created. A series of randomly generated situations sets a defending force with the potential to have sUAS capabilities against a superior attacking force without sUAS capabilities. A control case considers defenders without sUAS capabilities. In six experimental cases, defending forces deploy a single sUAS in one of six patrol patterns as a surveillance and indirect fire targeting tool. Subsequent analysis reveals that sUASs generally increase the odds of defender survival during an engagement and that short-range, concentrated patrol patterns lead to higher odds of defender survival and increased indirect fire opportunities. A battery of analyses showcase the model’s capabilities in terms of exploring novel sUAS implementation strategies and illustrating the impact of those strategies over a range of combat effectiveness metrics.

scholarly journals The Impact of Sensor Response and Airspeed on the Representation of the Convective Boundary Layer and Airmass Boundaries by Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (8) ◽  
pp. 1687-1699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam L. Houston ◽  
Jason M. Keeler
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Convective Boundary Layer ◽  
Sensor Response ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft ◽  
Unmanned Aircraft Systems ◽  
Lapse Rate ◽  
Convective Boundary ◽  
Aircraft Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rotary Wing

AbstractThe objective of the research presented is to assess the impact of sensor response and aircraft airspeed on the accuracy of in situ observations collected by small unmanned aircraft systems profiling the convective boundary layer or transecting airmass boundaries. Estimates are made using simulated aircraft flown within large-eddy simulations. Both instantaneous errors (differences between observed temperature, which include the effects of sensor response and airspeed, and actual temperature) and errors in representation (differences between serial observations and representative snapshots of the atmospheric state) are considered. Synthetic data are retrieved assuming a well-aspirated first-order sensor mounted on rotary-wing aircraft operated as profilers in a simulated CBL and fixed-wing aircraft operated through transects across a simulated airmass boundary. Instantaneous errors are found to scale directly with sensor response time and airspeed for both CBL and airmass boundary experiments. Maximum errors tend to be larger for airmass boundary transects compared to the CBL profiles. Instantaneous errors for rotary-wing aircraft profiles in the CBL simulated for this work are attributable to the background lapse rate and not to turbulent temperature perturbations. For airmass boundary flights, representation accuracy is found to degrade with decreasing airspeed. This signal is most pronounced for flights that encounter the density current wake. When representation errors also include instantaneous errors resulting from sensor response, instantaneous errors are found to be dominant for flights that remain below the turbulent wake. However, for flights that encounter the wake, sensor response times generally need to exceed ~5 s before instantaneous errors become larger than errors in representation.

scholarly journals Air Traffic Control Capacity Planning Under Demand and Capacity Provision Uncertainty

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 882-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Starita ◽  
Arne K. Strauss ◽  
Xin Fei ◽  
Radosav Jovanović ◽  
Nikola Ivanov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Control ◽  
Capacity Planning ◽  
Traffic Management ◽  
Fixed Number ◽  
Air Traffic ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Decomposition Approach ◽  
Considerable Uncertainty ◽  
Air Traffic Controllers ◽  
The Impact

In air traffic management, a fundamental decision with large cost implications is the planning of future capacity provision. Here, capacity refers to the available man-hours of air traffic controllers to monitor traffic. Airspace can be partitioned in various ways into a collection of sectors, and each sector has a fixed maximum number of flights that may enter within a given time period. Each sector also requires a fixed number of man-hours to be operated; we refer to them as sector-hours. Capacity planning usually takes place a long time ahead of the day of operation to ensure that sufficiently many air traffic controllers are available to manage the flow of aircrafts. However, at the time of planning, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the number and spatiotemporal distribution of nonscheduled flights and capacity provision, the former mainly due to business aviation, and the latter usually stemming from the impact of weather, military use of airspaces, etc. Once the capacity decision has been made (in terms of committing to a budget of sector-hours per airspace to represent long-term staff scheduling), on the day of operation, we can influence traffic by enforcing rerouting and tactical delays. Furthermore, we can modify which sectors to open at a given time (the so-called sector-opening scheme) subject to the fixed capacity budgets in each airspace. The fundamental trade-off is between reducing the capacity provision cost at the expense of potentially increasing displacement cost arising from rerouting or delays. To tackle this, we propose a scalable decomposition approach that exploits the structure of the problem and can take traffic and capacity provision uncertainty into account by working with a large number of traffic scenarios. We propose several decision policies based on the resulting pool of solutions and test them numerically using real-world data.

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