Situation Awareness for Mid-air Detect-and-avoid System for Remotely Piloted Aircraft

Abstract

As part of the European Detect and Avoid project MIDCAS three human-in-the-loop simulation campaigns were conducted with remotely piloted aircraft system equipped with a Detect and Avoid system flying according to instrument flight rules in an air traffic control environment. Situation awareness for remotely piloted aircraft system pilots and air traffic controllers was studied as part of an evaluation of the operational concept. Experienced pilots and air traffic controllers participated. Data was collected for qualitative analysis including observer logs, questionnaires, and notes from debriefings/workshops. In general the situation awareness was good however there were also examples of lost situation awareness during the simulations, reported in this paper. Lessons learned include how the system could further support remotely piloted aircraft system pilots situation awareness by highlighting if intruder is transponder equipped or not and semi-static or frozen information regarding traffic avoidance and standardized phraseology should be used to further support shared situation awareness between remotely piloted aircraft system pilot and air traffic controller. Given that remotely piloted aircraft systems are new in this kind of setting the result from this simulations are promising in that there were no major concerns found concerning situation awareness that would risk significantly affect the operational concept.