Phase-2 evaluation of a Tactical conflict detection tool in the Terminal area

A conflict detection and resolution tool, Terminal Tactical Separation Assurance Flight Environment (T-TSAFE), is being developed to improve the accuracy and reduce the false alert rate beyond currently deployed technology. The legacy system in use today, Conflict Alert, relies primarily on a dead reckoning algorithm. By adding altitude intent information for conflict detection and resolution, T-TSAFE may improve conflict detection accuracy. In addition to verifying T-TSAFE's efficacy over Conflict Alert, an initial human-in-the-loop study suggested possible avenues of tool improvement through heuristic analysis. Results of this analysis were then used to guide a follow-up T-TSAFE investigation, which is described in this paper. This follow-up study tested four experimental conditions. The first two conditions varied conflict detection with and without altitude clearances entered into the tool by the controllers via keyboard. The other two conditions varied the presence of Automatic Terminal Proximity Alert (ATPA), an FAA tool used for monitoring final approach [1]. One of these final approach conditions used regular alerts in the data block without cones and the others used ATPA cones between different aircraft (i.e., a cone graphic shown in the flight display) as a warning for possible compression errors in the final approach. Entering altitude clearances into T-TSAFE was expected to reduce false alerts but did not, possibly due to the short duration of the runs, which did not allow for a large enough frequency of altitude entries to study the issue adequately. Also, the test conditions did not significantly impact the duration of the alert or the controller's response time to the alert. The subjective data showed that controllers favored the ATPA cones over the T-TSAFE alerts in the data blocks on final approach. Results also indicate manageable levels of workload and situation awareness, which combined with other results, seem to indicate promise for T-TSAFE as a viable air traffic control tool, pending further research and adaptation.