The Free Flight Deck

1
The Free Flight Deck
Rob Ruigrok, Jacco Hoekstra, Ronald van Gent

• Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
• S-7, Flight Deck and Handling Qualities
  Standards for Transport Aircraft
• Amsterdam, 1 May 2000

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Presentation Overview

• Introduction to Free Flight
• Design of the Free Flight Deck
• Starting points
• Airborne Separation Assurance System
• Using the Free Flight Deck
• NLR studies on Free Flight with Airborne
  Separation Assurance
• Conclusions and Recommendations
• Future Plans
• Demonstrations

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Introduction to Free FlightRTCA definition zones

• Protected zone
• spatial, according operational separation
  standards
• expected to remain free of other aircraft
• Alert zone
• spatial or time based zone around the protected
  zone
• conflict alerts are issued to the pilot

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Introduction to Free FlightEurocontrols
definition
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Design of the Free Flight DeckStarting points

• Operational Concept (probe the limits)
• No Air Traffic Control
• Air crew responsible for traffic separation
• Focus on Free Flight Airspace
• Central Traffic Flow Management active
• Managed Airspace near airports (TMA)
• Cruise flight only
• Direct routing
• Optimal cruise altitude
• Limited scope
• No Special Use Airspace (SUA)
• No weather

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Design of the Free Flight DeckWhat do we need ?

• Aircrew has to
• see other traffic
• determine conflicts with other aircraft
• resolve conflicts with other aircraft
• avoid new conflicts with other aircraft
• be alerted

• Investigate minimum standard
• flight deck design based on, and close to current
  implementation (EFIS, FMS, TCAS)

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Design of the Free Flight DeckASAS equipment

• See other traffic
• Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast
  (ADS-B), Traffic Information Service - Broadcast
  (TIS-B)
• Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI)
• Determine and resolve conflicts with other
  aircraft
• Conflict Detection and Resolution (CDR)
• Avoid new conflicts with other aircraft
• Predictive ASAS (PASAS)
• Be alerted
• Alerting logic

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Design of the Free Flight DeckConflict definition
A conflict is defined as a potential intrusion of
the protected zone in the near future
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Design of the Free Flight DeckConflict Detection
Resolution
ownship
not shown 3. vertical speed change
intruder
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Design of the Free Flight DeckCockpit Display
ofTraffic Information

• Navigation Display
• Traffic Symbology
• Conflict Detection
• Resolution Advisories
• Vertical Navigation Display
• Extra EFIS Control Panel functionality

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Design of the Free Flight Deck Predictive ASAS

• no-go bands for
• track/heading

• vertical speed
• speed

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Using the Free Flight DeckNLR studies on Free
Flight

• Studies on Airborne Separation Assurance, the
  flight deck perspective
• Conceptual design and off-line validation
• Safety analysis
• 1997 human-in-the-loop experiment
• Cost/benefit analysis
• Avionics requirements study
• Critical conflict geometry study
• 1998 human-in-the-loop experiment
• In co-operation with NASA, FAA and RLD

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Using the Free Flight Deck1997 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• Traffic Densities
• Single
• Double
• Triple
• Level of Automation
• Manual
• Execute Combined
• Execute Separate
• Non-Nominal
• Other aircraft failures/events
• Own aircraft failures/events
• Delay time increased

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Using the Free Flight Deck1997 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• Acceptability
• 91.5 (single), 83.0 (double), 78.7 (triple)
• Safety
• 88.3 (single), 75.5 (double), 71.3 (triple)
• Workload
• ratings less than 40, indicating costing some
  effort
• Across all densities, across all sessions, across
  all subject pilots, including non-nominal events

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Using the Free Flight Deck1998 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• Goals
• study the transition to Free Flight Airspace (in
  space)
• study the transition towards Free Flight in time
• Starting points
• equipping aircraft should be immediately
  beneficial to the airlines
• equipping should be economy driven in stead of
  mandatory
• benefit the equipped aircraft, without excluding
  the unequipped aircraft

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Using the Free Flight Deck1998 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• Three ATM operational scenarios with Free Flight
  elements defined, implemented and tested
• Flight Level
• Protected Airways
• Full Mix
• Experiment matrix
• Traffic Density - low density versus high density
• Equipage - 25 versus 75 ASAS equipped
• ATM operational concept - Flight Level, Protected
  Airways and Full Mix

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Using the Free Flight Deck1998 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• gt 85 of responses indicate FF acceptable or
  better

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Using the Free Flight Deck1998 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• gt 85 of responses indicate FF as safe or safer
  than ATC

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Using the Free Flight Deck1998 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• Workload measurement
• Subjective by means of questionnaires with Rating
  Scale of mental Effort (RSME)
• Objective by means of Eye-Point-Of-Gaze
  measurements
• Scan randomness (entropy) used as objective
  metric for workload

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Using the Free Flight Deck1998 human-in-the-loop
experiment

• Workload sensitive to ATM operational scenario

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Conclusions and Recommendations

• The feasibility of Free Flight with Airborne
  Separation Assurance could not be refuted ,
  based on 7 NLR studies on Free Flight
• The future ATM design has to be chosen very
  carefully, since the design itself affects pilot
  and controller workload considerably
• The flightdeck crew was able to handle much
  higher traffic densities than the ground
  controller(distributed versus centrally
  organised nature)

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Future Plans

• Human Interaction Experiment, using Internet
  gaming facilities (scheduled June 2000)(we need
  many volunteering pilots for this, to register
  please contact ruigrok_at_nlr.nl or hoekstra_at_nlr.nl)
• Flight testing of ASAS equipment, using real
  data
• using NLR and possibly NASA laboratory aircraft
• Simulation experiments to study
• the effect of real ADS-B characteristics
• the use of Free Flight equipment in Managed
  Airspace
• the integration of traffic, weather and terrain
  information in the cockpit

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Demonstrations

• Research Flight Simulator Free Flight demo
• NLRs ATC Research Simulator NARSIM
• NLRs Research Flight Simulator - Next Generation

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Contact / More information

• NLR Free Flight web site
• http//www.nlr.nl/public/hosted-sites/freeflight
• E-mail/phone
• Rob Ruigrok ruigrok_at_nlr.nl, 31 20 511 3595
• Jacco Hoekstra hoekstra_at_nlr.nl, 31 20 511 3775
• Ronald van Gent rvgent_at_nlr.nl, 31 20 511 3760
• Mail
• Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaartlaboratorium
• Anthony Fokkerweg 2
• 1059 CM Amsterdam
• The Netherlands