Designing an ATC CPDLC Environment as a Common Information Space

Previous experiments involving controller pilot data link communications (CPDLC) highlighted several issues: 1) The risks of redundant actions between the executive controller (EC) and the planning controller (PC); 2)Defaults of mutual comprehension; 3) Decrease of situation awareness that have a deep impact on the efficiency and the quality of the cooperation. More generally, it was agreed that the controller working position (CWP) should be designed as a common information space in order to compensate those side effects. Furthermore, it was obvious that data was missing to grasp the phenomenon, considering that previous experiments did not focus on this topic. In order to gather data for analysis, real time simulations involving ATC controllers were conducted with the following experimental objectives: compare CPDLC situations to a reference situation without CPDLC and compare two CPDLC situations differing from the experimental conditions, i.e. the instructions given to the controllers. The experimental device enabled to link the observed behaviors to CPDLC feature, among other contributing factors. The experimentations showed that CPDLC is likely to add uncertainty in the activity by making elements of the team mate's activity less discernible. It also impacts the effectiveness of the cooperation which allows to support and to facilitate the convergence of the cognitive processes of the controllers on same objects. The further step was to extract experimental scenarios from the simulations that would be used for participatory design purposes. The controllers were involved in design workshops with the purpose of building the future CPDLC working environment as a common information space (CIS)