Flight Deck Display Research Lab @ NASA Ames

This paper reports on workload and situation awareness of pilots and controllers participating in a human-in-the-loop simulation using three different distributed air-ground traffic management concepts. Eight experimental pilots started the scenario in the en-route phase of flight and were asked to avoid convective weather while performing spacing and merging tasks along with a continuous descent approach (CDA) into Louisville Standiford Airport (SDF). Two controllers managed the sectors through which the pilots flew, with one managing a sector that included the Top of Descent, and the other managing a sector that included the merge point for arrival into SDF. At 3-minute intervals in the scenario, pilots and controllers were probed on their workload or situation awareness. We employed one of three concepts of operation that distributed separation responsibility across human controllers, pilots, and automation to measure changes in operator workload and situation awareness. We found that when pilots were responsible for separation, they had higher levels of awareness, but not necessarily higher levels of workload. When controllers are responsible and actively engaged, they showed higher workload levels compared to pilots and changes in level awareness that were dependent on sector characteristics.