Development of a Flight Collision Avoidance System for a Free Flight Environment: An Ecological Interface Design Approach
Pages : 120-133Download PDF
In a Free Flight Environment, safe –separations are delegated to the pilot by the Air Traffic Control. An adoption of a Free Flight Environment is considered vital as air traffic is predicted to double over the next two decades. Transitioning from the current Controlled Airspace to Free Flight Environment involves number of changes. A pilot role is to change to airspace and decision manager. Pilot’s responsibility will change with a new set of cognitive demands with varying tasks. Tasks such as collision avoidance are constrained. Flying in a Free Flight Environment, pilot requires constrained tasks to be performed both in En-route and Terminal airspace. However, the existing Air traffic Management (ATM) cannot cater for this significant increase. To cater for the relationship between pilot, collision avoidance system and the environment, a novel ecological airborne display has been developed. The display makes full use of an aircraft relative motion and protective cone display to make these constraints visible to the pilot as flight progresses. The interactive nature of these displays enables pilots to improve situation awareness and reduce cognitive workload. This paper describes the development and evaluation of this display.
Keywords: Free Flight Environment; Ecological Interface Design; Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI); Situation Awareness; Human and Machine Interactions