CWP - HMI

The Project “CWP / HMI” aims at delivering the following SESAR Solutions:

• Work Station, Service Interface Definition & Virtual Centre Concept: This project will develop the ATSU architecture from a service oriented approach with a focus on the technical services and common interfaces. Based on the Virtual Centre concept, the CWP/HMI needs to interface with one or more information service providers or consumers. Open standard interfaces for the CWP will facilitate the achievement of the Virtual Centre, understood as an operating environment in which different Air Traffic Service Units, even across different ANSPs, will appear as a single unit. The Virtual Centre approach requires operational and technical interoperability between the participating units. The amount of exchanges is expected to be very high. A high performing and reliable underlying communication infrastructure may be needed. This solution encompasses En-route and TMA and airport/TWR environments.

• Workstation, Controller Productivity: The project will develop guidance and assessment methods regarding HMI, will investigate new HMI needs and interaction modes in relation with SESAR solutions (including new user interface technologies such as speech recognition, multi-touch, gaze detection). The project will focus on technologies and interaction modes that are regarded as sufficiently mature.

Future environments of Airport Air Traffic Service (ATS), Terminal Manoeuvre Areas (TMA) and En-Route are anticipated to entail more information and be more complex. Improved Air Traffic Service will require substantially different management (notably using full business/mission trajectories) to work at the optimum efficiency, capacity and safety. Required improvement of Operations connected to an increased number of information sources will require automation and new tools to assist Airport ATS, TMA and En-Route Controllers, providing with all relevant information, at the right time, in an easy and intuitive way.

Possible separation of some ATM Information Providers from ATM Business Services providers to go towards a Virtual Centre (VC) approach requires a clear open and common service-oriented interface based on open architectures and technologies between the controller workstation and the related Information providers.

In today’s situation Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) usually host a monolithic ATM system in each Air Traffic System Unit (ATSU) with very few information services and infrastructure elements being shared between the different centres. In the Virtual Centre approach, the Controller Working Positions are decoupled and may even be geographically separated from the ATM information services that they consume, and these ATM information services may be shared between different ATSUs or even between ANSPs. The main benefits expected from the Virtual Centre approach are cost reduction and more flexibility to support load-balancing between the participating ATSUs. The development of technical services and common interfaces resulting from new technologies, working methods, Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and procedures would also need to address human factors considerations. The proliferation of proprietary systems with proprietary interfaces shall be avoided as well as the use of non-user friendly interfaces.

There is a need to increase the efficiency of using the CWP HMIs by exploiting the latest mature technologies. The project will thus be tasked with a transversal role related to HMI and human performance aspects. In this role, it will in particular need to investigate new HMI needs (response time, appearance and other characteristics) and interaction modes (touch, gesture, voice etc...) in relation to SESAR solutions and support the other ATM solution projects in integrating suitable new user interface technologies.

Assuming that the infrastructure performance in terms of security, data integrity, response time, latency etc. is met, project will support the achievement of the following performance objectives:

• Increased safety;

• Increased ATCO efficiency;

• Increased capacity;

• Improved resilience;

• Improved HMI and usability and performance of interactions;

• Improved interoperability in Airports, TMA and En-Route domains.