یک مدل از تشخیص درگیری کنترل ترافیک هوایی و حل تعارض

A model of the mental activities of en route controllers in air traffic control (ATC) is outlined. As an example of the psychological research rendering the basis for this model, the methods and results of an experiment with experienced controllers is sketched which is concerned with conflict detection in ATC. Further, a procedure for conflict resolution is described, supplementing the general model. This procedure is designed to be transformed into a computer based assisting system in ATC. Problems and functions of operator models in the development of new technologies in air traffic management are discussed.

This contribution pursues two purposes. First, it will outline an extended research program aspiring to develop an elaborated model of air traffic controllers’ mental activities.Secondly, it will report on an attempt to determine the most feasible conflict resolution if conflicting trajectories are detected in a given traffic constellation. Both attempts are concerned with en route control in lower airspace, leaving aside the transitions as well to airport approach as to the upper air space.In 1995 at the onset of our project, it’s main purpose was to develop a generalized mental model representing the controllers’ conceptions of their momentary mission. This assignment implies parallel processing of multiple tasks,as for instance information retrieval, anticipation of future constellations, conflict detection, and conflict resolution, in a continuously changing environment. Since there existed no antecedent attempts to model multiple cognitive goals in a dynamic situation, we decided to implement our model also as a computer simulation of the controllers’ activities in order to keep track of mutual interactions of the numerous tasks. The results of this simulation helped us repeatedly to detect inconsistencies or omissions in our conceptual model.We named our model MoFL, according to the German terming Modell der Fluglotsen Leistungen (model of air controllers’ mental processes).Later on, our psychological project was integrated into an interdisciplinary research group on air traffic management(Fricke et al. [7]). This new frame of our research gradually diverted our approach from a psychological model of a dynamic mission toward the attempt to develop a tool that might anticipate influences of changing technologies on the controller’s awareness, and thus assist the human centred design and the evaluation of new ATC tools. This paper will first outline MoFL as the result of psychological reasoning, based on many experiments with experienced ATC controllers, and show that it’s basic assumptions proved to be successful.In a second section, we will argue that the construction and implementation of a complete and coherent operator model hardly can keep abreast of the technological changes in ATC to be expected in near future, because of the time consuming experiments necessary to specify the information flow in MoFL. For instance, data link communication will dramatically change the controller’s scheduling of his activities.Consequently, we supplemented the basic architecture of MoFL by modules which are based on logical reasoning rather than on observations of the controllers’ cognitive activities.To illustrate this approach, we will sketch a new procedure for conflict resolution. This proceduremight be transformed into an assisting system, independent of MoFL, that calls the most feasible solution for any existing conflict between trajectories.