Minimizing Lapses in Situational Awareness using Assistive Automation
Institution: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
“Situational awareness is the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their significance, and a projection of their status in the near future,” according to Stanton et al. (2001). (Definition of situational awareness section). The most generally acknowledged model of situational awareness, Endsley’s, included a critical aspect among others; the three stages of situational awareness are perception, comprehension, and projection (Endsley, 2015).
Advanced training has guaranteed that abilities for operating machinery and systems in the aviation sector safely have been created.Despite this, a breakdown of human factors-related aircraft accidents shows that skills-based errors account for 80% of the time, decision-making errors account for 30%, and perceptual errors account for 6%. (Souvestre, 2008). This indicates that current training and programs, which include self-regulated skills, leave gaps in situational awareness, necessitating the development of a new technique to further reduce these gaps and, as a result, accidents caused by perceptual errors.
In several elements of flight, we can already observe the benefits of assistive automation in reducing decision-making and perceptual errors. A tactile display design of switches in a flight deck overhead panel or a maintenance circuit breaker panel, for example, and an auto-throttle system for sustaining selected speeds with thrust are two examples. These examples exhibit a spectrum of help from mild to high level, including tactile designed switches, push in or out for braille function without regularly loading visual channels, and auto-throttle speed control, which reduces the duty of speed control in flight to a monitoring level. Greater gains can be made by building on these foundations. Building on these foundations, more progress may be made in reducing situational awareness lapses and, as a result, accidents caused by skills and perceptual errors. Fellah and Guiatni (2019) present a unique approach to assistive automation in which visual channel overload in critical flying situations is mitigated thanks to integrated tactile stimulation that aids perception and processing of tactile feedback signals. The human-machine interface (HMI) for modern flight decks requires the visual interpretation of multiple signals and a timely suitable response to the stimuli; failure to do so, usually due to visual channel saturation, results in errors and, as a result, accidents. While auditory displays have been integrated to complement visual displays in a multimodal interface approach to counter visual channel overload, success has been limited, according to Fellah and Guiatni, as both the visual and auditory channels are still overloaded in pilots, and the visual and/or auditory information is degraded or unavailable in some cases. To broaden the range of tactile stimulation to include different modes Fellah and Guiatni demonstrated that using four tactors, one on each side of the torso (horizontal flight path alterations) and one on the chest and back (vertical direction), offered tactile feedback for pitch and roll. These improved tractors feedback, programmed to the aircraft flight envelope and optimum recommendation to prevent possible loss of control were easier for the pilots to perceive and interpret.
According to Guastello (2014), a person can work quickly without making mistakes up to a crucial point (the onset of stress and exhaustion), after which the frequency of errors increases.In relation to Fellah and Guiatni (2019), where a multimodal approach under stress situation showed participants in the study still accurately perceived tactile stimulation even when visual and auditory inputs were not perceived. This buttresses the view that in human-machine interphase systems assistive automation improves situational awareness due delivery of input data or signal via multimodal channels and thus, avails less chances of loss of perception, and can be explored and improved across flight, maintenance and air traffic control platforms.
References
Endsley, M. R. (2015). Situation awareness misconceptions and misunderstandings. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 9(1), 4-32. doi:10.1177/1555343415572631
Fellah, K., & Guiatni, M. (2019). Tactile display design for flight envelope protection and situational awareness. IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 12(1), 87-98. doi:10.1109/TOH.2018.2865302
Guastello, S. J. (2014). Human factors engineering and ergonomics: A systems approach (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, Florida;New York;London, [England];: CRC Press.
Souvestre, P. A., Landrock, C. K., & Blaber, A. P. (2008). New paradigm for understanding in-flight decision making errors: A neurophysiological model leveraging human factors. Hippokratia, 12 Suppl 1(Suppl 1), 78-83.
Stanton, N. A., Chambers, P. R. G., & Piggott, J. (2001). Situational awareness and safety. Safety Science, 39(3), 189-204. doi:10.1016/S0925-7535(01)00010-8