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1. ALIAS Conference
Human role and automation: impacts on the aircraft
design
The aircraft manufacturer perspective
Florence,
15/06/2012
Fabio Ruta

2. Keywords and definitions
• Conference keywords
– … the conference will address liability and automation in air transport, focusing on air
traffic management
• Some definitions
– liability, legal [Black’s Law Dictionary]
The quality or state of being legally obligated or accountable; legal responsibility to
another or to society, enforceable by civil remedy or criminal punishment (liability for
injuries caused by negligence)
– automation [source www.definitions.net]
the technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by highly
automatic means, as by electronic devices, reducing human intervention to a minimum
– Autonomy [EUROP SRA – July 2009]
… is the system’s ability to independently perform a task, a process or system adjustment
– Air traffic management [source EC]
The aggregation of the airborne and ground-based functions (air traffic services,
airspace management and air traffic flow management) required to ensure the safe and
efficient movement of aircraft during all phases of operations.
2

3. Background
• Today the human role is central in the air transport operations and control
• Tomorrow, more
– Services to the users
– Automation through availability of mature and reliable technologies
• But
– The human role will continue to be central: the system is not and will not be liable!
– The level of safety must not decrease
– Current roles and responsibilities will be impacted: allocation and sharing need to be
clearly established
– What is behind the realisation and operations of a complex automated distributed
system:
• what increased automation means ?
• who is responsible for what in a distributed system?
• how to handle new distributed services (e.g., satellite, information net, etc.)?
• Focus of this presentation is on aircraft manufacturer side 3

4. More automation vs human integration
Today
• The aircraft is designed around the human and the level of automation (human vs
system) can be variable: e.g.:
– use of the aircraft (e.g. civil vs military, piloted vs remote piloted);
– level of aircraft capabilities (e.g. sensors, systems, performances, etc);
– level of workload acceptable/manageable by the human, etc
• Information to be provided to the human can significantly change according to the
level of automation (more automation, less information to be managed by the
human)
• The current tendency is to have:
– an active human control based on the situational awareness presented by the system
– some automation systems and/or functions as support to the human
• But, the use of remote piloted aircraft (RPA) is also to be considered (e.g. today
mainly for military applications)
4

5. More automation vs human integration
Tomorrow
• In distributed systems, more information and services will be available,
– the manageable human workload remains the same
– the system must do more (what’s the appropriate situational awareness level?)
– Collaborative system and standardisation are needed
“Standardisation means also HMI”
• the level of separation among aircraft shall be reduced as well as more flexibility in
the tactical flight management
– the reaction time of human is limited
– more systems are needed to support the human (on ground and in flight)
(e.g. information fusion, flight data consistency, etc.)
• for the near future, extensive use of RPA
– also for civil applications and
– its technological footprint on manned aviation (e.g. hijacking conditions)
5

6. The challenges
• The requirements and the means of compliance are clear and recognised
– What’s can be accepted by the authorities and what’s the industry need to demonstrate
• The legal basis need to be established
– Total System Approach should be adopted
– service providers needs to be correctly taking into account
 quality of service approach should be used (e.g. satellite signal)
– when the human (pilot) is liable and when are the other parties
 manufacturer, service providers, air traffic controllers, etc
• The operational part need to well defined
– who does what’s for the entire gate-to-gate flight profile (normal/emergency condition)
– taking into account the human dimension, the system capability
• The security aspects in a distributed systems need to be addressed (who does
what’s) as well as the privacy protection
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7. The challenges
• In an automated distributed system who is responsible and for what’s. E.g.:
– the aircraft will use information and data provided by an other party (air and/or ground)
– what’s happens in case of corrupted data?
• The aircraft will work on corrupted data
• The corrupted results will be presented to the pilot and
• Which are the consequences if the relevant functions are safety critical?
– standardisation and techniques to check the data quality need to be established
• from an “auxiliary system” to a “flight system” need a shift on responsibility e.g.
– Today
• GPS is an auxiliary to the navigation system
• pilot knows that the only reliable and certified navigation source is the inertial
system
• A low figure of merit (FOM) of GPS can be acceptable
– Tomorrow
• Satellite navigation will become the primary navigations source
• Degradation of the received Signal (availability, reliability, integrity, etc) is not
acceptable and then has to be managed
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8. Remarks
• Automation is a great opportunity for the users, but different areas have to be
investigated
• Level of automation need to correctly address:
– level of human capabilities
– central human role in the system (from a direct control to supervisory control)
– override on the system must be maintained
– Different system capabilities have to be considered
• As far as liabilities is concerned:
– a legal basis is to established
– the total system approach should be adopted
– the operational part need to be defined in a solid way in normal & emergency conditions
• Areas to be explored:
– quality of service and standardisation aspects (interoperability & data dissemination
quality)
– security aspect (jamming, etc) is a key-point in a more automated distributed system
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9. Thank you very much for your attention
Regional Military Airlift
Aerostructures Special mission
Trainer Defence