Coordinated by:
Lockheed Martin UK
Consortium members:
Delft University of Technology (TUDelft, NL), Irish Aviation Authority (IAA, EI) Center for Human Performance Research (CHPR, NL)
Research Questions
What are the benefits of ‘strategic conformance’ i.e. the degree to which automation’s behaviour and apparent underlying operations match those of the human? An experimental design was used in which controllers were presented with advisories which they were led to believe were generated by automated agents, but were in fact unrecognisable replays of their own conflict resolution performance from previous simulation runs.
Research Scope
MUFASA aimed to develop a framework for designing future levels of ATM automation, based primarily on human-in-the-loop simulation. The project scope was to study the benefits of ‘strategic conformance,’ i.e. the degree to which automation’s behaviour and apparent underlying operations match those of the human. It was found that controllers rejected roughly 25% of their very own previous resolutions, when they believed these were provided by automation. This perhaps suggests either an inherent automation bias, or or that controllers are simply inconsistent over time, a topic which should be explored in future research
The project was able to show that conformal advisories were accepted more frequently, led to higher controller agreement and also reduced acceptance time. This has some potential implications for the design of automation as it seems that higher trust and acceptance can be obtained through adapting automation logic to an individual’s working style.
Research Results
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Another interesting finding within MUFASA was that fact that controllers did in fact reject their own resolutions (roughly one quarter of the time) when they believed these were generated by automation. The reasons for this, for example whether an inherent automation bias could be the cause or whether controllers are inconsistent over time could be a subject for future research.