Design of an Airborne Three-Dimensional Separation Assistance Display

In the context of the Next Generation Air Transportation System and Single European Sky ATM Research future airspace programs, this paper describes a concept for an airborne separation assurance display that is designed to aid pilots in their task of self-separation, by visualizing the possibilities for conflict resolution that the airspace provides. This paper is part of an ongoing research toward an ecological design of a separation assistance interface that can present all the relevant properties of the spatiotemporal separation problem. A work-domain analysis is described from which several perspective projections of traffic properties and travel constraints are derived. A display concept is proposed that presents heading and altitude action possibilities in a flight-path angle-track angle action space. Key issues in the current design are discussed, with recommendations for future work.