Human-Computer Interaction

Human Computer Interaction

Computers have many purposes in aviation. Discussed here is how computers are used for automation, free flight, computer-based training and simulators. Issues concerning automation are how effectively people use, trust and understand the logic underlying the autopilots within the flight management system.

The automation system is highly complex and often provides the pilot with little feedback about what it is doing and why. This situation of pilots' not trusting the automation system has resulted in many computer related incidents. For example, the 1994 accident in Japan, and many other accidents, were caused by confusion with the automation interface. The automation system has changed the pilot's task from an active to a monitoring role. Some research involving human automation issues are performed at NASA.

Free flight refers to pilots having the authority to determine their own air routes, without the air traffic controller intervention. Most likely this advanced computer technology won't happen in the near future, however job descriptions of pilots will change to include some duties of the air traffic control (ATC).

Computer-based training provides a cheaper, safer, more convenient, and less stressful way to learn flight skills without having to learn in actual flight. Human-computer interfaces are used in almost any aviation training, and dictated by the actual operating system for which he/she is being trained. Cockpit simulators provide many characteristics of real flight and are used when researchers want to mimic the aviation environment but finds it too costly, dangerous, or time consuming to conduct the study in the actual aviation environment. Issues raised about flight simulators also focus on how to design them so that they can produce the greatest transfer of training from the simulator to flight. Questions are raised about whether critical aviation skills, like visual landings, can be taught with a an aviation simulator.