The effects of automation on situation awareness in an air traffic control simulation.

摘要

Situation Awareness (SA) has been defined as "the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future" (Endsley, 1988; pg. 97). For air traffic controllers, SA is crucial in updating and maintaining their 'picture' of the air traffic situation. As a greater amount of automated assistance is introduced into the air traffic control domain, there has been concern as to how automation may affect SA. The present study examined SA in manual and automated control conditions of an air traffic control simulation. It was found that, in a low dynamicity environment (where there was a low rate of information flow to be processed by the operator), automation had neither beneficial nor detrimental effects on SA. In a highly dynamic environment (where there was a high rate of information flow to be processed by the operator), automation was found to significantly benefit the highest level of SA (projection of future status). It was concluded that automation may have allowed participants to distribute their attention across more information sources, reduced workload related to system operation, or presented participants with better integrated information.