A Simulator Study of Flight Deck Automation and Cockpit Task Management
A Simulator Study of Flight Deck Automation and Cockpit Task Management |
|
| Synopsis: | This page describes a simulator study of aircraft incident reports conducted to determine the effect, if any, of level of flight deck automation on Cockpit Task Management (CTM). The findings suggest that CTM performance may be affected by automation level as a function of flight phase. | ||
| Keywords: | cockpit task management, flight deck automation | ||
| Authors: | |||
| Candy Suroteguh | <suroteca@orst.edu> | Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA | |
| Ken Funk | <funkk@engr.orst.edu> | Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA | |
| Last Update: | 23 Dec 99 | This is a Work in Progress and its contents are subject to continual revision. | |
Our ASRS incident study tends to confirm what the flight deck automation issues study asserted, that automation can and does divert pilot attention from safety-critical flight control tasks. What it does not do is tell us why this is so. What is it about automation or about how pilots think about or use automation that distracts them, sometimes with fatal consequences? Why do CTM errors occur, especially in advanced technology aircraft? Though our automation issues study identified evidence that automation interface design may be a culprit, there is as yet no satisfactory empirical data on which to base design or operational recommendations to improve CTM performance in advanced technology aircraft. But findings from this and other research suggest factors that may affect task management performance, and knowing the existence and magnitude of those effects will go a long way towards offering design guidelines and recommendations for procedures.
To begin to address these issues, we conducted a part-task simulator experiment to determine the effect of the level of automation and pilot's level of automation proficiency on CTM performance. Nine airline transport pilots served as subjects in this study. Every pilot flew three scenarios, each scenario with a different level of flight deck automation, in the simulator. We measured each pilot's CTM performance by identifying the number of task prioritization errors committed in each experiment run. We compared the average number of errors at different levels of automation and automation proficiency to determine the effect of those factors on CTM performance. We found that level of automation affected CTM performance as a function of flight phase. But we found no effect of automation proficiency (as measured by "glass cockpit" hours) on CTM performance.
to be expanded
Listed below, most recent first, are changes made to this page since its creation.