Arrival Management Support in the Presence of Prediction Uncertainty

Future concepts for Air Traffic Management (ATM) foresee—and even mandate—an increase in the distance from the destination airport at which the ATM system should start planning the arrival sequence and arrival time of inbound flights. By increasing the horizon beyond one hour before arrival, it becomes possible to timely adjust the flight path...

Pilot-Induced Oscillations and Control Surface Rate Limiting: Comprehension, Analysis, Mitigation, and Detection

From the Wright Flyer to fly-by-wire, the phenomenon of pilot-induced oscillations (PIO) has persisted, evolving with the complexity of the airframes and their associated flight control systems. Though airframe designers have long recognized the threat posed by PIO, each generation has been forced to address the issue whether identified in...

Visual Attention in Human−Machine Interaction

Humans are incapable of attending to everything at the same time. The serial nature of focused attention limits the information intake capacity of the perceptual system. This thesis deals with the measurement and modelling of visual attention distribution. It is examined whether measures of visual attention are predictive of task performance....

Haptic feedback for flight envelope protection

Improving the safety level of aviation is vital to prevent serious accidents. One key area where improvements can be made is the prevention of loss of control occurrences, by preventing the aircraft state to pass beyond the limits from which no recovery is possible. Such improvements can focus on improved monitoring of the main flight parameters...

Managing startle and surprise in the cockpit

After several recent flight safety events, such as the accident of Air France flight 447 in 2009, investigators determined that surprise and startle can severely disrupt pilot responses. They concluded that pilots need to be better prepared for unexpected and potentially startling situations. In response, aviation safety authorities have...

Evidence-based development and evaluation of haptic interfaces for manual control

At present, the rapid development of automation technologies allows robots remarkable precision and endurance, as well as the strength in accomplishing repetitive tasks. Despite this, manual control is still indispensable in many domains where robots and humans play complementary roles, as humans demonstrate superior competence in improvisation...

Objective evaluation of human manual control adaptation boundaries using a cybernetic approach

Manual control tasks can be found everywhere in our daily activities, and the human ability to adapt in controlling many different vehicles such as cars and airplanes make it possible for us to travel farther, faster and higher. The human adaptation ability to changes in the controlled element dynamics is indispensable for tasks requiring high...

Ecological Approach to Pilot Situation Awareness

Future air traffic concepts foresee that in unmanaged airspace, to reduce workload of air traffic controllers and the resulting constraints on capacity, the separation task will be delegated to the flight deck. Technology-driven pilot self-separation support systems have been developed that present explicit automated solutions to deal with...

The Effects of Specific Force on Self-Motion Perception in a Simulation Environment

Self-Spacing Algorithms for Continuous Descent Approaches

The thesis describes the algorithms design required to perform in-trail self-spacing during continuous descent approaches. Both distance-based and time-based spacing is treated. The CDA-procedure that is investigated is the Three-Degree Decelerating Approach (TDDA). The results of various off-line and simulator experiments as well as test flight...