Empirical Study On Human Errors And Ergonomics Of Remote Tower Controllers

In recent years,the remote tower has been developing rapidly all over the world,providing an alternative to the physical tower for the airport with the bad natural environment,poor visibility,and difficult duty.Compared with the physical tower,the contents,and regulations of the remote tower providing airport air traffic services have not changed.The major changes are in the infrastructure and technical systems,as well as the resulting operational process method adjustment and human ergonomic adaptation.Given the establishment of a global remote tower regulation and standard system for mutual verification of operation and technology,a large number of technical index testing and verification work based on the human factor efficiency of air traffic controllers is urgently needed in China.Research at home and abroad suggests that the technical standard of the remote tower should be established based on human factor ergonomics tests to reduce the differentiated perception of controllers.Therefore,based on contemporary remote tower development practices in China,this paper systematically combs the decision-making tasks of tower controllers by combining qualitative research and quantitative research methods,analyzes the influencing factors of remote tower display interface on controllers’ perception and decision-making,and studies cognitive load and situation awareness in remote tower control,to improving the efficiency of safe operation.Firstly,taking tower control task decomposition as the starting point,hierarchical task analysis(HTA)is used to decompose airport control tasks.SHERPA,a systematic human error reduction and prediction method,is used to classify human error types for each task step,and all task steps are classified and analyzed based on the equipment used.The tasks that need to be paid attention to and the tasks that need the tower controller to make decisions by the visual view are found out.The two tasks together constitute the key decision set of remote tower control.Second,the cognitive task characteristics of remote tower controllers were analyzed,key decisions in remote ramp control scenarios were clarified,and a cognitive behavior model of remote tower controllers was established to describe the cognitive process of key decisions.Based on the Human Error in ATM(HERA)technology developed by EUROCONTROL,remote tower controllers’ human error types,and root causes are divided into four cognitive levels: perception,memory,planning,and decision-making and response execution.Field investigation predicted the probability and severity of various human errors,sorted out the influencing factors of key decisions and provided detailed risk source identification and impact factor analysis for remote apron operation.Finally,field tracking research was used to conduct quantitative analysis of various human factor ergonomics indicators of controllers under different control modes.NASA-TLX scale,eye tracker,and alertness test were used to obtain subjects’ subjective and objective interaction indicators.The operation mode of the apron tower control was taken as an independent variable,each human factor ergonomics index was taken as the dependent variable,and duty time was taken as a control variable.To explore whether there are significant differences in human ergonomics indexes such as subjective workload,eye movement parameters,and alertness of apron controllers in the physical tower and remote tower scenarios.Finally concluded: In large airports,apron controllers based on digital towers can obtain higher monitoring efficiency,have better overall control ability,ensure adequate safety performance,and effectively solve the problem of long head-down time of controllers.Controllers’ alertness will not be reduced,and their safety performance is not lower than that of physical towers.However,the effect of remote tower mode on controller visual fatigue needs to be further verified.