Interface design for human-automation collaboration in highly automated ATC environments

Abstract

The joint management of airspace by human controllers and automated agents is gaining prevalence in nextgeneration Air Traffic Control (ATC). In such settings, human controllers are challenged with maintaining situation awareness while dealing with intricate and often opaque automated technologies. This study probed the potential of a concept interface, which augments traditional radar displays, to facilitate human controller-automation teamwork. With visual explanations and interactive elements, it intended to make the control behavior of automated agents transparent and comprehensible to human operators. The primary objective was to explore whether features from a non-conventional design could offer insights for designing interfaces for highly automated ATC operations. The concept was tested in a prototype-based user experience evaluation with static traffic scenarios, involving 15 active air traffic controllers from the Maastricht Upper Area Control Center. Results indicated that the visual explanations of the interface enabled controllers to comprehend the plans and reasoning underlying automation’s behavior. A significant correlation between controllers’ evaluations and their attitudes toward novel technologies underlines the influence of pre-existing beliefs about automation on the acceptance of new interface tools. Future research is warranted to streamline parts of the design and further investigate the interface’s capacity for explaining automation’s actions in dynamic, real-time scenarios.