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Since the 1950s, the crew required to fly transport category aircraft has been reduced from five to two. NASA is currently exploring the feasibility of a further reduction to one pilot. In this study we examine the effects of separating the pilots on crew interaction. The results are consistent with earlier research on decision-making between remot...
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Context 1
... the Together condition participant crews sat together at a low fidelity, desktop based flight simulator (see Figure 1). In the Separate condition, the FO was relocated to a second room, where the right hand seat of the dual cockpit configuration was reproduced ( Figure 2). The captain remained at the left seat of the dual pilot flight deck, however, the right side monitors with the FO's PFD, Nav Display and a tablet that presented workload probes to the FO were turned off. ...
Context 2
... time workload was collected using a probe procedure. Every three minutes the pilots heard a tone and a response panel appeared on a display to the left (for the captain) or right (for the first officer) of the flight displays (see Figures 1 and 2), from which the pilot selected one of nine boxes marked 1-Low to 9-High. The post-trial workload was assessed on a paper questionnaire with the same scale. ...
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Citations
... To capture the cognitive processes and cognitive skills for FPM, cognitive walkthroughs (Polson et al., 1992) are a useful methodological approach. Past research has used cognitive walkthroughs to elicit knowledge from pilots about the cognitive processes needed to perform a task using a tailored set of criteria (Gore et al., 2011;Helander & Skinnars, 2000;Lachter et al., 2014;Polson & Smith, 1999). A cognitive walkthrough has two phases, preparation and evaluation (Polson et al., 1992). ...
This research provides a current benchmark of the cognitive skills and cognitive processes needed for flight path management (FPM) in current commercial air transportation flight operations. While some cognitive skills for aviation have been identified, it remains unclear which skills are most pertinent for different phases of flight, for different tasks, across different aircraft types, and during operational complexity. Further, there is concern that flight deck automation may contribute to cognitive skill degradation. Two expert pilots participated in cognitive walkthroughs to establish a current benchmark of the cognitive skills and cognitive processes needed for FPM. The tasks involved seven different phases of flight and two different aircraft; the results from two phases are reported—Preflight Briefing and Initial Climb. The findings indicate nineteen cognitive skills, and three metacognitive skills are used by pilots for FPM. In addition, the cognitive process models needed for FPM are all very similar, regardless of the aircraft type, task, phase of flight, or increased operational complexity. These results provide a foundation for future efforts on cognitive skill degradation, training of FPM cognitive skills, and may be used to inform the design of new automated systems to support pilot cognition.
... However, it also poses new communication and coordination problems from the air to the ground. In a flight simulator experiment, Lachter et al. (2014) separated the crews and required them to divert the original flight plan; the subjective workload of crews and their ultimate decisions were similar, but they were confused about their roles (ie, who was the pilot flying/who was monitoring?) and awareness of actions (ie, who entered the commands?). Several flight-simulation studies highlighted that assistance from the remote ground operators is necessary to the implement of SPO ( As a result of the integration of cockpit-and groundbased concepts, the third concept of SPO has received much attention in addressing some critical issues such as incapacitation (Harris et al., 2015;Johnson, 2015;Matessa et al., 2017;Wang et al., 2020;Xu et al., 2022) (Table 1). ...
... For example, a significant proportion of Americans (46%) viewed commercial airline flights with two pilots in the cockpit as "very safe" (Ipsos, 2018). Although the physical separation of crew members showed no impact on pilots' decisions and workload compared to face-to-face interactions (Lachter et al., 2014), passengers exhibited a lower level of trust in remote operators stationed on the ground . ...
... However, despite the proposal by Neis et al.'s (2018) of seven integrated SPO concepts that cater to different flying situations and are derived from the initial cockpit-based and ground-based designs, it remains unclear which SPO pattern is more acceptable to passengers. A previous relevant study indicated that the separation of crew members had no impact on pilots' decision-making and workload, supporting the ground-based design of SPO (Lachter et al., 2014). This is also in line with the perspective of Xu et al. (2022), who consider the presence of the remote operator on the ground as a necessary condition for SPO. ...
... 105 HITL studies help confirm the functionality of the system prototype, identify the problems and requirements for the next iteration, and save time and money in redesign after the system is deployed. Table 6 69,71,106,133 summarizes the research results of using HITL to evaluate SPO system designs. Some functions which need to be allocated to the system are identified. ...
... In the first HITL simulation, the effects of two pilots working together and in different locations on crew collaboration and workload were evaluated. 106 In this experiment, a desktop flight simulator replicated the cockpit of a current transport class aircraft. Subsequently, the recruited pilots flew six 15-minute off-nominal scenarios using the desktop flight simulator in two conditions: in the first condition, two pilots sat next to each other and worked together to simulate current TCO in the cockpit; in the other condition, two pilots used a voice device to communicate with each other in two different rooms to simulate future SPO. ...
... To explore the communication challenges further, Lachter et al. conducted a study using ten two-pilot crews with desktop simulator in two different scenarios with three separate increasing workloads to examine the effects on communication [33]. Scenario one had the pilots sitting side-by-side. ...
... Surprisingly, the pilot rating results of the communication differences comparing being together and separate show little difference between pilot ratings in the three different workload scenarios. However, study of cockpit video and pilot survey responses by the researchers indicated several instances of confusion as indicated in Table 2 below from the Lachter et al. study [33]. ...
... Lachter, Battiste, Matessa, Dao, Koteskey, and Johnson in their study found the biggest obstacle testing this system was confusion about who was doing what, with pilots rating this alternative poorly [33]. This was discussed previously with results shown in Table 2. ...
There are several compelling reasons for airlines to consider single pilot operations including economic savings, coping with a shortage of pilots, and automation and artificial intelligence technology advancement. To adequately explore this concept, differing aviation industry views of single pilot operations (SPO), challenges associated with single pilot operations, an overview of current SPO research and options, and conclusions and recommendations are presented. Ultimately, many obstacles to implementation must be overcome including convincing the general public that it safe which may be the biggest challenge of all. However, SPO will continue to move forward not only due to potential commercial aviation economic benefits, but also because one day, technology will allow it and perhaps even demand it.
... Communications/social issues and certification and approval issues have been acknowledged but neglected. First mentioned are critical to SPO (Lachter et al., 2014) but no dedicated SPO setup has dealt with this issue yet. Whereas the details that are content-related to SPO are discussed in depth in Schmid and Stanton (2019b) we focus on elaborating the contributions of systems thinking approaches and their methodological advantages to SPO research. ...
Systems thinking methods have evolved into a popular toolkit in Human Factors to analyze complex sociotechnical systems at early design stages, such as future airliners’ single pilot operations (SPO). A quantitative re-analysis of studies from a systematic literature review (Schmid & Stanton, 2019b) was conducted to categorically assess their contributions to researching SPO and to fitting their systems thinking methods to contemporary Human Factors problems. Although only 15 of 79 publications applied systems thinking methods to operational, automation, and the pilot incapacitation issue(s) of SPO, these studies provided a comprehensive concept of operations that is able to deal with many issues of future single-piloted airliners. These theoretical models require further evaluation by looking at the empirical instances of system behavior. Finally, the hierarchical structures in system’s development and operations from systems thinking enable Human Factors professionals and researchers to approach SPO systematically.
... This reduction in crew size has been enabled by the development of flight deck automation that performed functions that used to be performed by the radio operator, the navigator, and the flight engineer. Currently, crew size reduction from dual-pilot operation to Single Pilot Operation (SPO) has been under exploration (e.g., Comerford, et al., 2013;Shively, et al., 2017;Lachter, et al., 2014a;Schutte, et al., 2007;Liu, Gardi, Ramasamy, Lim, & Sabatini, 2016;Lachter, et al., 2014b). ...
This paper represents the development and the design of a Playbook interface which supports the coordination between human and autonomous teammates in Single Pilot Operations. The move from Dual-Pilot Operations to Single Pilot Operations necessitates that the autonomous teammate will perform some of the functions which are performed by pilots in Dual-Pilot Operations. The Playbook concept is inspired from the American football where team players get trained specific action sequences together, communicate in a common shorthand, and quickly adapt to changing conditions during games. The Playbook interface supports the ability of human and autonomous teammates to express their intentions and delegate functions to respond to a situation during flight. A walkthrough of a Playbook prototype with a use case is presented for Single Pilot Operations.
... The first simulation (reported in detail in Lachter et al. 2014a) looked at the effects of being in separate locations on crew communications (as suggested by Thomas Sheridan in Comerford et al. 2012). Twenty participants were drawn from active or recently retired commercial airline pilots with a minimum of 300 h of glass cockpit experience and were divided into ten two-pilot crews. ...
From the 1950s through the 1980s, aircraft design was marked by an increase in reliability and automation, and, correspondingly, a decrease in the crew complement required to fly, resulting in the two-pilot operations seen today. However, while technological progress has continued, there have been no further reductions in crew complement, largely because the two pilots mitigate each other’s failures (both mistakes and incapacitation). We present a conceptual framework under which we believe a reduction in crew complement could be made while maintaining current levels of safety. Under this framework, much of the monitoring and verification would fall upon automation. Ground personnel performing an enhanced flight following role would aid the remaining pilot in assessment of any off-nominal event. Additionally, in particularly high-workload or risky situations, a ground pilot could step into the role of first officer. We then discuss four human-in-the-loop simulations conducted at NASA Ames Research Center that illustrate key aspects of this conceptual framework and informed key aspects of its development.
Advanced avionics and automation technologies have significantly transformed cockpit operations, resulting in a gradual reduction of the crew members on-board. Single-pilot operations (SPO) concept is gaining significant attention in the aviation industry due to its potential for cost savings and to cope with the anticipated pilot shortage and the increasing air traffic demand. This paper conducts a scoping literature review on SPOs, serving as an initial step to map the scientific peer-reviewed content on the subject. The survey focuses on three thematic domains, which are, respectively, operations, automation, and the emerging field of digital and cognitive flight assistants. The methodology involved the use of Google Scholar and IEEE Xplore databases. Sources were selected adapting the search criteria to the proposed sub-topics and prioritizing either the most cited and recent contributions. The analysis of the literature reveals a growing body of work in the recent years. This review also highlights interest in the human-centered design for automation solutions which are responsive to cognitive and behavioral states of the pilot. While acknowledging the potential safety and operational challenges associated with SPOs and the pilot-automation cooperation, this work suggests that great research efforts should be made on the human factor and regulatory subjects to pave the way for a feasible and safe implementation of the single-pilot paradigm in commercial aviation.
Single Pilot Operations (SPO) for commercial aircraft has been planned to be the core development direction of the next generation civil aircraft operating mode in 2030 by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Safety is a key airworthiness factor in the design of commercial aircraft. However, the increasing system integrity and a higher degree of air-ground task collaboration make safety the main challenge in implementing SPO, it is extremely hard to effectively identify potential hazard elements in the system using the traditional dual-pilot safety analysis methods. To address the above problems, this paper introduces the hazard pattern mining method and proposes different hazard pattern mining algorithms to identify potential hazard patterns implied in air-ground resource sharing, function fusion, and task collaboration. And a model-based simulation verification platform has been proposed to complete the safety assessment and verification of SPO air-ground task collaboration. It can provide a theoretical basis of safety analysis for further developing commercial aircraft based on SPO mode.
