Initial assessment of the impact of modern taxiing techniques on airport ground control

Zarrin Chua (1) , Mathieu Cousy (2) , Mickael Causse (3) , François Lancelot (4)

1 DCAS - Département Conception et conduite des véhicules Aéronautiques et Spatiaux
2 IHM Aero - ENAC - Programme transverse IHM Aéronautique
3 ISAE-SUPAERO - Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace
4 Airbus Groups Innovations

Project Modern Taxiing (MoTa) studies the impact of future taxiing technologies such as Datalink and autonomous taxiing tugs on airport taxiing operations and air traffic controller workload. Seven air traffic controllers were asked to manage ground traffic in two scenarios that imposed medium and high levels of workload with three different degrees of automated technology assistance: paper strips; Datalink and path suggestion; Datalink, path suggestion, and tugs. Initial results indicate that participants were able to manage more traffic when using either just the interface or interface and tugs, but the inclusion of tugs also resulted in an increase in self-reported workload. Participants were divided on technology acceptance with no one rejecting completely the new technology.

Mots clés: Airport taxiing; air traffic control; Datalink; autonomous taxiing tugs

Domaines: Informatique [cs]; Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]

Zarrin Chua, Mathieu Cousy, Mickael Causse, François Lancelot. Initial assessment of the impact of modern taxiing techniques on airport ground control. HCI-Aero 2016, International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Aerospace, Sep 2016, Paris, France. pp.ISBN : 978-1-4503-4406-7, ⟨10.1145/2950112.2964589⟩. ⟨hal-01598863⟩