Human-Machine Interaction in Aircraft Cockpits - Situational Awareness and Mental Workload in highly complex environments

The thesis explores human machine interaction in highly automated aircraft cockpits with special attention to situational awareness and mental workload. The theoretical part includes approaches form the aircraft and human perspectives and identifies levels of automation as well as concepts that are related to the human with an emphasis on situational awareness and mental workload. Although the overall aircraft accident rate has declined with the implementation of automated cockpit systems, international aviation safety organizations still receive accident and incident reports regularly. The reason for the fatal and non-fatal events is mainly due to human factors in the complex dynamic cockpit environment and only a minority of events is due to the system. For this reason an empirical study with an online questionnaire was carried out in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center to collect expert opininions from pilots who operate different aircraft types. Results show that there is no reason to further extend cockpit automation but instead to focus on impoving the existing design to advance the understanding of the automated systems. Especially mode awareness is a curcial factor as is missing information form the system about acceleration and angle of attack durcin takeoff, climbing, approach and landing. Further complaints concern the design of the flight control unit, electronic centralized aircraft monitoring (Airbus) and the engine indication and crew alterting system (Boeing) where experts identified the necessity to arrange infromation better, develop the application further and advance the display size. Althaough the amount of simulator training is defined as adequate, the experts still have the wish for more simultor practice. As for the ongoning technical develepments and increasing system complexity compard to the limited human capabilities, future research has to continuously detect deficits i human machine interachtion to adjust the auomated systems tot the humans as well as possible and also to train flight crews adequately, perhaps using new techniques