Design and Evaluation of a Safety Augmentation System for Aircraft

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a safety augmentation system for aircraft that prevents intrusions into a no-fly zone, representing a class of static external hazards. Additionally, when the risk of intrusion is most imminent, the system features an automated fail safe. Different from current alerting systems that only target the visual and aural communication channels, the safety augmentation system also uses the haptic channel to communicate its intent and to provide a smooth transition in control authority from human to machine. The goal of this paper was to investigate what combination of communication modalities would best fit such a system to benefit safety, performance, risk awareness, pilot workload, and acceptance. An experiment with 10 professional airline pilots in a fixed-base simulator showed that safety significantly increased when more communication channels were targeted, in which the visual information contributed most to the pilot’s risk awareness. Haptic feedback showed significant improvements in secondary-task performance, but it also frustrated pilots because the cues were not always clear. Subjective measurements revealed that, although hardly being activated, the automated fail safe gained low pilot acceptance as a means to increase safety.