CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Pressure to provide for more daily flights -- combined
with old equipment and a shortage of personnel -- has prompted the Federal
Aviation Administration to consider automating more functions at its air
traffic control facilities. Before implementing any changes, however, consideration
must be given to the effects such changes would have on the people who work
in the facilities, says a new report issued by a National Research Council
panel, chaired by a University of Illinois professor.
"We have learned some lessons from automation in other domains that
suggest certain kinds of automation are good and helpful, while other kinds
can be confusing and dangerous," said Christopher Wickens, head of
the U. of I. aviation research lab and a professor of psychology and of
industrial engineering.
Examples where automation could benefit human performance in air traffic
control include the scheduling of multiple flight paths and the graphical
representation of complex flight trajectories in three-dimensional space,
Wickens said. "Such tasks are very difficult and time consuming for
the unaided mind."
Too much automation could do more harm than good, Wickens cautioned. "No
system is fail-safe, therefore we may not want to remove the human operator
from the loop. Controllers must be able to efficiently monitor the system
and be able to take over if the automation should fail."
Because monitoring is not something that humans do especially well, more
effective displays of the existing and projected flight paths could help
air traffic controllers maintain better "situation awareness"
with an automatic system and make appropriate decisions in the event of
a failure, Wickens said.
In its recent report, Flight to the Future: Human Factors in Air Traffic
Control (published by the National Academy Press), the panel examined the
role of human factors in the current air traffic control system.
"We made a series of recommendations that range from hiring criteria,
work schedules and training programs for air traffic controllers, to the
types of information that should be displayed," Wickens said. "By
employing good human factors, the safety and reliability of the present
system can be improved."
In its next report, expected to be completed later this year, the panel
will assess different types of automation that the FAA is considering, and
make recommendations on how the automation should be implemented.
The panel's three-year study is funded by the FAA.