Assessment of a Gaze-aided User Interface to Assist in the Visually-intensive Workloads of Air Traffic ControllersJoshua Wade and Yiming Wang

Introduction

Air Traffic Control (ATC)•Aerodome/Tower ATC vs Remote ATC•Secondary Surveillance Radar•Controllers

Introduction

Problem•ATC is highly stressful•High demand on visual awareness•Complex mental-transformations of coordinate spaces

Potential Solution•Use technology to reduce the complexity of the task•Simulate possible interface using virtual reality (VR) and eye-tracking for proof of concept

Introduction

Hypotheses1. A gaze-aided system would improve the performance of ATC controllers2. ATC controllers would spend more time looking at aircraft in the environment and less time looking at other (distracting) objects

Application DesignDevelopment EnvironmentVR Module

•Unity3d•Maya

Gaze Module•Tobii X120 eye tracker•Standalone Application (C#)

LAN•TCP Sockets

User Evaluation

Protocol✦Session Structure•practice mode•interaction methods•15 tasks per session•3 types of tasks

1.takeoff2.landing3.collision-prevention

•short breaks between tasks•questionnaires (3)

✦Group Comparison•between subjects•2 groups (G1 and G2)

1.G1 with gaze-aided system2.G2 without gaze-aided system

User Evaluation

Participants10 total (7 M, 3 F)9 aged 20-29 years, 1 aged 30-39 yearsAll participants were students4 experienced with VR3 experienced with eye tracking

User Evaluation

Results

GazeSignificant difference between total time spent looking at ROI during a session (p < 0.05), with G2 spending more time looking at ROI than G1

G1 G2avg 337.009 413.4552stdev 37.45928695 28.19720047ttest 0.011510892

Total Gaze Duration (s)

Results

PerformanceNo significant difference in number of failures

(p=0.25)No significant difference in time taken to

complete tasks unless outliers were removed (p=0.43 with outliers, p=0.01 without outliers)

Results

QuestionnairesAll questions scored on a 7 point Likert scale (range 0-6)No comparison between groups in Post-practice questionnaire

Post-session questionnaire: no statistically significant results, but several small p-values

Discussion

QuestionnairesPost-practice:1. Hotspot & Keyboard were equally-liked, but Keyboard was chosen by 8 of 10 participants2. Participants felt the text could have been presented more clearlyPost-session:1. Seems that participants in G1 were generally more bored, more frustrated, and more stressed than participants in G2, although the p-values were not significant2. Despite having the gaze-aided system, G1 participants appear to have reported a generally more negative experience overall than G2

GazeResult did not confirm our 2nd hypothesis

PerformanceResults did confirm our 1st hypothesis when outliers were removed from the data set

Conclusion