The cockpit associate: A "co-pilot in a box" for general aviation

An important focus of NASA's Small Aircraft Transportation Systems (SATS) research initiative is the development of new technologies to increase safety for single-pilot operation of general aviation (GA) aircraft. Under the auspices of the SATS program, and with funding from the Mid-Atlantic Maryland SATS Lab¹, Applied Systems Intelligence, Inc. is prototyping a Cockpit Associate, a knowledge-based decision aiding system that provides the pilot with relevant flight information commonly provided by a co-pilot. The Cockpit Associate can intelligently manage electronic checklists, select navigational charts, and recommend route revisions when world state changes (e.g. weather and traffic). This can improve a single pilot's awareness of pertinent flight information, and at the same time reduce the pilot's cognitive workload that is devoted to obtaining such information. We describe three main functions of the Cockpit Associate: (1) monitoring relevant world state, including pilot actions and aircraft status, (2) matching monitored world state against a model of general aviation flight activities in order to identify the current intent of the pilot (e.g. preparing for takeoff, or reacting to a given emergency), and (3) simplifying the retrieval of relevant information and alerts via use of existing onboard avionics suites and a special-purpose Cockpit Associate display. We present the Cockpit Associate's knowledge-based model of GA flight operations and its prototype implementation in a flight simulation environment. We also discuss a graphical display used to give the pilot shortcuts to a set of dynamically selected alerts and information aids, while leaving the pilot in full control of what information is viewed. We discuss future plans for the Cockpit Associate, including multi-associate coordination based on