Concepts of multimodal interactions to support Human Performance in Remote Tower Operations

This thesis deals with the development of exploratory concepts of multimodal interactions able to support the Human Performance (HP) of Tower (TWR) Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) from a remote tower, during the traffic management on the area under their responsibility. Nowadays the TWR Controllers’ job consists in the management of the aircraft and vehicles movements on the runways and taxiways of an airport and they perform their tasks with the Out-The-Window (OTW) view, which means that they look at the vehicles without using any screens, but directly looking outside of the tower building windows, especially in small and medium airports. In recent years, a new operational concept emerged in aviation: the Remote Tower Operations (RTOs). The motivation of the growth of this new concept is the current European situation of small and medium density airports that often have to face the difficulties and the high costs for the provision of a safe and efficient Air Traffic Service (ATS). The idea behind is that in the new remote working environment, the Tower ATCO will no longer perform his/her tasks from a local aerodrome but from a distant position. According to the European guidelines that are being developed to define the technical and operational requirements of the Remote Tower system, it is supposed that the TWR ATCOs will monitor the traffic mainly through the implementation of high definition cameras, including also radar screens and radio transmission, instead of the OTW. In addition to the visual information, the aerodrome outdoor sound is also taken into consideration for the development of the Control Working Position (CWP) support tools, without any mention to data collected through other sensory modalities. The PhD work has been carried out in the framework of a European project called MOTO (The embodied reMOte TOwer) which, considering the above-mentioned context and the theories of multisensory interaction and embodied cognition, explores the possibility to improve human performance in RTOs. The multisensory concept and the embodied cognition, which study the feeling and the modalities humans use to interact with the environment, have been considered as the theoretical context to achieve a full understanding on how controllers use all of their senses during every day operations, in order to improve the situation awareness and to decrease the workload. This approach offers the advantage of analysing complex human behaviours during natural interactions in real-world environments and in enriched simulations of the real world.