ABZ 2023

Arrival Manager

Case Study

José and Phil.


This case study brings in the issues specific to the domain of interactive systems. Important aspects are: 

User as a key component

User input unpredictable

Output must be perceived by users

Output must be understood by users

Users use the system to perform tasks and work

The reactive nature of interactive systems

Informal description of the case study

The Air Traffic Control activity in the TMA (Terminal Manoeuvring Area) is an intense collaborative activity involving at minimum two air traffic controllers (see image below) communicating with a set of aircrafts. The TMA is the area where controlled flights approach and depart in the airspace close to the airport. 

TMA controllers working collaboratively 

ATC is a collaborative work performed locally by two specialized air traffic controllers. The executive ATC interacts with pilots (usually using voice) while the planner ATC organize the work and the flow of aircrafts. 

The planner controller (left-hand side) is in charge of planning clearances (orders) to be sent to pilots by the executive controller (right-hand side of figure) who uses a radar screen. 

The AMAN (Arrival MANager) tool is a software planning tool suggesting to the air traffic controller an arrival sequence of aircraft and providing support in establishing the optimal aircraft approach routes. Its main aims are to assist the controller to optimize the runway capacity (sequence) and/or to regulate/manage (meter) the flow of aircraft entering the airspace, such as a TMA [1]. It helps to achieve more precisely defined flight profile and to manage traffic flows, in order to minimize the airborne delay, leading to better efficiency in terms of flights management, fuel consumption, time, and runway capacity utilization. The AMAN tool uses the flight plan data, the radar data, an aircraft performance model, known airspace/flight constraints and weather information to provide to the traffic controllers, via electronic display, two kind of information:

The figure below presents the abstract view of AMAN tool that computes and presents a landing sequence that may be used by Air Traffic Controllers. 

Screenshot of a subpart of an AMAN User Interface (arrival sequence) 

This is an example of concrete user interface. It could be relevant to define and represent interactions from controllers such as using drag and drop interaction technique to modify the sequencing proposed by AMAN prediction tool. 

The EXC_TMA is the controller deputed to handle the communications ground/air/ground, communicating to the pilots and releasing clearances to aircrafts. He/she has the tactical responsibility of the operations and he/she executes the AMAN advisories to sequence aircraft according to the sequence list. 

For the case study scenario, we propose that the pilots assume a passive role, limited to the reception and execution of the clearances. Other more active roles (such as requesting an emergency landing) can be considered but are likely to make thing significantly more complex. 

Air-Traffic Controller Tasks 

Tasks of the EXEC_TMA air traffic controller is described below using the HAMSTERS notation [2] and [3]. The notation presented in [4] explicitly supports collaborative activities among users as well as representing motor, perceptive and cognitive tasks involved in the accomplishment of a goal. The figure below presents an abstract task model of the management of arrivals in the TMA area. 

User Interface of AMAN

The Figure below show the Maestro user interface of AMAN (excerpt from document at the bottom of the page). We provide here several examples of UIs for AMAN. The figure below presents the MAESTRO user interface - Runway view 

User Interface of Radar Screen

An example of an ATC radar screen is presented in the figure below. On that figure one can see the labels associated with each aircraft including information such as aircraft callsign, cleared flight level, ... The line ahead of the aircraft spot is called the speed vector and describes the position of the aircraft in 3 minutes time. The longer the line the faster the aircraft. That line does not take into account the change in heading if any i.e. if the aircraft is changing heading then it will not be in 3 minutes where the speed vector is indicating. Behind the spot of the aircraft, the set of dots identify the previous positions of the aircraft (usually 5 of them).  The figure below presents the Air Traffic Control radar screen (each label representing an aircraft) 

The image below the detail of the information presented on the radar screen for a given flight. Cleared flight level can be interactively edited by the controller. 

 References

[1] EUROCONTROL, Arrival Manager. Implementation GUIDELINES and Lessons Learned. Edition 0.1, 2010

[2] Célia Martinie, Philippe A. Palanque, Marco Winckler: Structuring and Composition Mechanisms to Address Scalability Issues in Task Models. INTERACT (3) 2011: 589-609

[3]  Peter Forbrig, Célia Martinie, Philippe A. Palanque, Marco Winckler, Racim Fahssi: Rapid Task-Models Development Using Sub-models, Sub-routines and Generic Components. HCSE 2014: 144-163

[4] Célia Martinie, Eric Barboni, David Navarre, Philippe A. Palanque, Racim Fahssi, Erwann Poupart, Eliane Cubero-Castan: Multi-models-based engineering of collaborative systems: application to collision avoidance operations for spacecraft. ACM conference on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems EICS 2014: 85-94

Case Study Proposers

José C. Campos is an associate professor at the Department of Informatics of Universidade do Minho and a senior researcher at HASLab/INESC TEC. His research interests lie at the intersection of Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, with a particular interest in formal verification applied to interactive computing systems. José chairs IFIP Working Group 2.7/13.4 on User Interface Engineering and the steering committee of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium of Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS), and is a member of the editorial board of the ACM Proceedings on Human Computer Interaction. Besides engaging in fundamental research, he regularly cooperates with industry on applied research projects.  

Philippe has been involved in the design and assessment of automation in multiple projects (mostly in safety critical systems including Air Traffic Management, Satellite ground segments and cockpits of large civil aircrafts.

Philippe Palanque is professor in Computer Science at the University Toulouse 3 and is head of the ICS (Interactive Critical Systems) research group at IRIT Lab. Since the early 90’s his research focus is on interactive systems engineering proposing notations, methods and tools to integrate multiple properties such as usability, dependability, resilience and more recently user experience. These contributions have been developed together with industrial partners from various application domains such as civil aviation, air traffic management or satellite ground segments. Recently he has been involved in the specification of future interactive cockpits and their interactions and in the modelling of operational states of civil aircraft (with direct support from and close collaboration with Airbus). The main driver of Philippe’s research over the last 20 years has been to address in an even way Usability, Safety and Dependability in order to build trustable safety critical interactive systems. He edited and co-edited more than twenty books or conference proceedings including the "Handbook on Formal Methods in Human-Computer Interaction" published by Springer in 2017.