Effects of Imperfect Automation Support on Air Traffic Controller (ATCO) Performance, Mental Workload, and Attention Allocation: Miss vs. False Alarm Prone Automation

This study investigated ATCo performance with reliable and imperfect automation support to examine whether automation benefits would accrue in a mixed equipage environment where ATCos were no longer responsible for freely maneuvering aircraft. Of particular interest was how types of automation imperfections would affect ATCo performance and attention allocation. Further, it was studied if automation imperfection would affect ATCo trust and attention allocation to freely maneuvering aircraft. With reliable automation ATCos detected conflicts better and sooner, compared to manual performance. Second, with imperfect automation primary task performance degraded significantly and ATCos felt more self-confident to perform without the automation when they were supported with imperfect compared to reliable automation. With respect to types of imperfection, there was a marginal trend for worse performance with miss prone automation as compared to false alarm prone automation. Third, while there were no differences in trust ratings or eye movements to freely maneuvering aircraft, ATCos perceived that freely maneuvering aircraft improved their performance more with automation than without