Airspace Operations Lab @ NASA Ames

As part of an ongoing research effort on separation assurance and functional allocation in NextGen, a controller-in-the-loop study with ground-based automation was conducted at NASA Ames Airspace Operations Laboratory in August 2012 to investigate the potential impact of introducing self-separating aircraft in progressively advanced NextGen time-frames. From this larger study, the current exploratory analysis of controller-automation interaction styles focuses on the last and most far-term time frame. Measurements were recorded that firstly verified the continued operational validity of this iteration of the ground-based functional allocation automation concept in forecast traffic densities up to 2x that of current day high altitude en-route sectors. Additionally, with greater levels of fully automated conflict detection and resolution as well as the introduction of intervention functionality, objective and subjective analyses showed a range of passive to active controller-automation interaction styles between the participants. Not only did the controllers work with the automation to meet their safety and capacity goals in the simulated future NextGen timeframe, they did so in different ways and with different attitudes of trust/use of the automation. Taken as a whole, the results showed that the prototyped controller-automation functional allocation framework was very flexible and successful overall.