Perspective versus Plan View Air Traffic Control Displays: Survey and Empirical Results

Abstract

A survey was distributed and an experiment was performed to analyze two air traffic control (ATC) color-coded display formats: (1) the currently used plan view display format, and (2) a perspective display format. The results of both the survey and experiment were used to extract specific user requirements from which specifications could be applied to design a three-dimensional, dynamic, color-coded, perspective display for use in an ATC environment. The emphasis of the survey and current experiment focused on the air traffic controller's point of view in terms of cognitive workloads, task and information requirements, color preferences, and air traffic workloads relative to traffic density and complexity. Fifteen full-performance air traffic controllers performed three timed tasks: (1) resolve impending air traffic conflicts, (2) identify the callsigns of aircraft in the highest and lowest actual altitudes, and (3) reconstruct air traffic situations. Two levels of traffic density were crossed with two display types for six different ATC scenarios. The results indicated that for the conflict resolution task performance was faster for the perspective display format only in the lower density level, and performance was the same for both display types in the higher density level. Performance for altitude extraction task for both density levels was faster for the perspective display format than for the plan view display format. Performance was the same for the reconstruction task for both display types and both density levels. Finally, performance was faster for the conflict resolution task than for the altitude extraction task across both display types and both density levels.