Human role and automation: impacts on the aircraft design

The aircraft manufacturer perspective

Florence,15/06/2012

Fabio Ruta

ALIAS Conference

• Conference keywords– … the conference will address liability and automation in air transport, focusing on air traffic

management

• Some definitions– liability, legal [Black’s Law Dictionary]

The quality or state of being legally obligated or accountable; legal responsibility to another or to society, enforceable by civil remedy or criminal punishment (liability for injuries caused by negligence)

– automation [source www.definitions.net]

the technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by highly automatic means, as by electronic devices, reducing human intervention to a minimum

– Autonomy [EUROP SRA – July 2009]

… is the system’s ability to independently perform a task, a process or system adjustment– Air traffic management [source EC]

The aggregation of the airborne and ground-based functions (air traffic services, airspace management and air traffic flow management) required to ensure the safe and efficient movement of aircraft during all phases of operations.

Keywords and definitions

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Background

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• Today the human role is central in the air transport operations and control

• Tomorrow, more– Services to the users– Automation through availability of mature and reliable technologies

• But– The human role will continue to be central: the system is not and will not be liable!– The level of safety must not decrease– Current roles and responsibilities will be impacted: allocation and sharing need to be

clearly established – What is behind the realisation and operations of a complex automated distributed

system: • what increased automation means ? • who is responsible for what in a distributed system?• how to handle new distributed services (e.g., satellite, information net, etc.)?

• Focus of this presentation is on aircraft manufacturer side

Today• The aircraft is designed around the human and the level of automation (human vs

system) can be variable: e.g.:– use of the aircraft (e.g. civil vs military, piloted vs remote piloted); – level of aircraft capabilities (e.g. sensors, systems, performances, etc); – level of workload acceptable/manageable by the human, etc

• Information to be provided to the human can significantly change according to the level of automation (more automation, less information to be managed by the human)

• The current tendency is to have: – an active human control based on the situational awareness presented by the system– some automation systems and/or functions as support to the human

• But, the use of remote piloted aircraft (RPA) is also to be considered (e.g. today mainly for military applications)

More automation vs human integration

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Tomorrow• In distributed systems, more information and services will be available,

– the manageable human workload remains the same – the system must do more (what’s the appropriate situational awareness level?) – Collaborative system and standardisation are needed

“Standardisation means also HMI”

• the level of separation among aircraft shall be reduced as well as more flexibility in the tactical flight management

– the reaction time of human is limited– more systems are needed to support the human (on ground and in flight)

(e.g. information fusion, flight data consistency, etc.)

• for the near future, extensive use of RPA – also for civil applications and– its technological footprint on manned aviation (e.g. hijacking conditions)

More automation vs human integration

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• The requirements and the means of compliance are clear and recognised– What’s can be accepted by the authorities and what’s the industry need to demonstrate

• The legal basis need to be established– Total System Approach should be adopted – service providers needs to be correctly taking into account

quality of service approach should be used (e.g. satellite signal) – when the human (pilot) is liable and when are the other parties

manufacturer, service providers, air traffic controllers, etc

• The operational part need to well defined– who does what’s for the entire gate-to-gate flight profile (normal/emergency condition)– taking into account the human dimension, the system capability

• The security aspects in a distributed systems need to be addressed (who does what’s) as well as the privacy protection

The challenges

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• In an automated distributed system who is responsible and for what’s. E.g.:– the aircraft will use information and data provided by an other party (air and/or ground)– what’s happens in case of corrupted data?

• The aircraft will work on corrupted data• The corrupted results will be presented to the pilot and• Which are the consequences if the relevant functions are safety critical?

– standardisation and techniques to check the data quality need to be established

• from an “auxiliary system” to a “flight system” need a shift on responsibility e.g.– Today

• GPS is an auxiliary to the navigation system • pilot knows that the only reliable and certified navigation source is the inertial

system• A low figure of merit (FOM) of GPS can be acceptable

– Tomorrow• Satellite navigation will become the primary navigations source• Degradation of the received Signal (availability, reliability, integrity, etc) is not

acceptable and then has to be managed

The challenges

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• Automation is a great opportunity for the users, but different areas have to be investigated

• Level of automation need to correctly address:– level of human capabilities– central human role in the system (from a direct control to supervisory control)– override on the system must be maintained– Different system capabilities have to be considered

• As far as liabilities is concerned:– a legal basis is to established– the total system approach should be adopted– the operational part need to be defined in a solid way in normal & emergency conditions

• Areas to be explored:– quality of service and standardisation aspects (interoperability & data dissemination quality)– security aspect (jamming, etc) is a key-point in a more automated distributed system

Remarks

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Thank you very much for your attention

Regional Military Airlift

Aerostructures

Trainer Defence

Special mission