2nd International Symposium on Computer, Communication, Control and Automation (3CA 2013)

Human-Machine-Cooperation Design Methodology for Civil Aircraft Cockpit

Zhili Tang An Zhang

School of Electronics and Information School of Electronics and Information
Northwestern Polytechnical University Northwestern Polytechnical University
Xi’an, China Xi’an, China
e-mail:[email protected] e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract—As far as the safety of civil aviation is concerned, the

relationship between pilots and automation systems is always A. High definition large screen panoramic display/control
the focus of cockpit design discussed by system designers. system
Based on the famous “Crew Centered” design philosophy, the For the comprehensive awareness of the aircraft’s
human-machine-cooperation design methodology of civil situation, large size display is necessary. Touch and voice
aircraft cockpit is introduced, which contain human-machine could be control means.
function allocation, human-machine interface simulation and
evaluation. The result of function allocation has a direct B. 3D and 4D display mode
influence on human-machine interface because it determines 3D and 4D graphical information can help pilots get
the material format of interface. Furthermore, human- stronger situation awareness ability, react faster, and avoid
machine interface simulation and evaluation can validate the errors [1][2].
work efficiency of function allocation. So the cockpit interface
designed by human-machine-cooperation design methodology C. The use of HUD
will veritably realize the combination of human and machine, The Head-up Display (HUD) has been applied on
which can enormously enhance the safety and effectively of the
military aircrafts, especially fighters, for 40 years and
civil aircraft cockpit.
shown great effect. It can help pilots reduce the workload
Keywords-Human-machine-cooperation, Function allocation, and avoid attention distraction in crucial flight phases, such
Interface simulation, Interface evaluation as taking off, approaching and landing.
D. Cockpit automation
I. INTRODUCTION In modern civil aircraft’s cockpit, automation system has
Civil aviation transportation is developing faster and been widely used. Along with its function to reduce pilots’
faster in the whole world and the safety, effectiveness and workload, automatic system also brings the threat of air
economy of the plane are being paid more and more attention. crash due to pilots’ relaxing or the failure in the interaction
The fast developing market brings new challenges for civil between it and pilots [3]. The problem of how to allocate
aviation technology. Advanced automation systems, new and manage the tasks of pilots and the automatic systems is
materials, new air traffic control system, and so on, are under more and more crucial.
study or being tested for application. As far as we can see, an
evolution of the civil aviation technology is almost coming II. THE DESIGN METHODOLOGY OF CIVIL AIRCRAFT
up. Among all the researches on new civil aviation theory COCKPIT
and technology, those on the aircraft cockpit play an Along with the benefit of technology developments in the
important role in enhancing the performance of the human- cockpit, especially the application of auto-pilot, two
machine system onboard the aircraft, especially the safety of problems turned out crucial in today’s cockpit design:
the flight.
Aircraft cockpit is the main workplace for pilots in flight. 1) How to allocate and manage the tasks of human and
Pilots receive flight information by visually searching the automatic system, defined as Human-machine
outside the cockpit and reading the display inside, then Function Allocation (HMFA) problem.
control the aircraft with different controllers in the cockpit.
The cockpit is the center of an aircraft and it’s so important 2) The Human-machine Interface (HMI) problem, more
that the safety and effectiveness of the flight are tightly specifically, the HMI design and evaluation problem.
linked with it. Ever since the flight of the world’s first plane, Both function allocation and interface design and
the cockpit of civil aircraft has developed enormously. It evaluation are typical problems from human-machine system.
goes through 5 main development phases. With the rapid In a human-machine system, function allocation and
evolution of automatic and electric technology, several new interface design are tightly linked with each other. The
development trends of future cockpits are presented: interface design must take the function allocation scheme
into consideration. They are the two major parts of a human-
machine system design process.

© 2013. The authors - Published by Atlantis Press 110

 With the application of more and more advanced
automatic systems, the relationship between the machine and
pilots has become more complex. To deal with this
relationship, designers need a philosophy to guide their work.
“Crew Centered” [4] is a design philosophy accepted by
most cockpit designers. But different civil aircraft
manufacturing companies take different design strategies.
Boeing and Airbus, two magnates in civil aircraft
manufacturing, held different strategies in the design of their
typical aircrafts’ cockpits [5][6][7][8]. The “human
dominant” strategy, taken by Boeing, means that pilots hold

Figure 1. Flow chat of HMCDM

the final decision-making authority and the machine

should provide enough information for pilots. Boeing’s
Figure 2. Flow chat of HMFA
understanding of “Crew Centered” emphasizes human’s
subjective activity, while Airbus emphasizes the inevitability
of human-errors instead. The “machine dominant” strategy, TABLE I. AUTOMATION LEVEL
taken by Airbus, means that the automation system takes as
many tasks as possible. Both “Human dominant” and LOAs Description
“Machine dominant” have inner problems, which have System does not provide any assistance, one must
1
caused serious accidents. So we bring forward the Human- complete all the decisions and manipulation
machine-cooperation Design Methodology (HMCDM), 2 System provides decision-making or action plan
which get man and automation system finish respective adept
tasks and cooperate with each other. Human and the machine 3 System narrows scheme selection
are colleagues. With this philosophy, the design of the
4 System provides a proposal
cockpit will be carried out in the process with four main
steps, as shown in Fig. 1. 5 Execute the plan if humans agree
III. HMFA OF CIVIL AIRCRAFT COCKPIT The scheme is allowed to be vetoed in the limited time
6
before the implementation
Implement Automatically unless it is necessary to notice
A. HMFA process of civil cockpit 7
human being
HMFA concept is a part of Function Allocation (FA). 8 Told them if humans want to know
The concept of FA was firstly presented by P. M. Fitts in
1951 [9]. FA is a process in which functions or tasks in 9 Whether or not to inform humans is decided by computer
systems are allocated to man or machines. Currently, FA is System decides all the work and refuses to man’s
widely applied in automatic monitor systems in nuclear 10
intervention
power plant, control systems of the UCAV, control systems
of manned space flight, air traffic control, the design of B. The automation level of FA in human-machine systems
pilot’s cockpit, etc. HMFA of civil cockpit means that In the process of function allocation in human-machine
functions in civil cockpit are properly allocated to pilots or systems, through the allocation function between man and
cockpit systems. Fig. 2 is the flow chat of HMFA for civil machine, it can be argued that man and machine are a
cockpit. cooperative relationship. The relationship represents in the
different Levels of Automation (LOAs) of human-machine
functions. Currently, there are a variety of divisions about
LOAs of human-machine interaction systems [10] [11].
Sheridan, Verplank and Parasuraman have put forward a
method about automation level of human-machine
interaction systems, as shown in Tab. I. Nowadays, many
other schemes are just based on some certain merged or
refined level.
C. The method of HMFA based on the ULMADM
Here, FA can be regarded as a multiple attribute decision
making (MADM) problem [12]. In order to solve the highly

111
uncertain decision problems in the early stages of design, we
introduce a kind of the ULMADM (Uncertain Linguistic
Multiple Attribute Decision Making) method and use
UEWAA (Uncertain Extended Weighted Arithmetic
Averaging) and ULHA (Uncertain Linguistic Hybrid
Aggregation) operators to solve these problems in human-
machine systems [13][14].
1) Confirm the automation level range of function
allocation: The automation level range can be determined
according to a comprehensive comparison about each of
capability advantages of man and machine. The method
about how to determine the automation level range is based
on UEWAA operator.
2) Determine the automation level of function allocation:
Automation level range of function allocation has been
established, namely, several different solutions to function
allocation are given. However, selecting the optimal scheme
from the solutions is still needed according to function
allocation evaluation criteria. Eventually, the final Figure 3. Configuration of civil aircraft cockpit simulation
automation level of human-machine function allocation can
be determined. In the practical evaluation process, in order
to reduce experts’ subjective deviation, different schemes
are usually graded by several evaluation experts in
accordance with the evaluation criteria. The MADM method
based on UEWAA and ULHA operators is used to
determine the automation level of function allocation.
According to the method mentioned above, we take take-
off, landing, fault diagnosis and avoidance system as
examples of FA, after the calculation, the results demonstrate
that the proposed method about function allocation is
feasible and effective.
IV. HMI SIMULATION FOR CIVIL AIRCRAFT COCKPIT
We have built a simulation system based on VMIC
Figure 4. Simulation interface of PFD
(Virtual Memory Image Card) optical fiber network, which
is comprised of cockpit display/control simulator, flight
visual simulator, and synthetic evaluation software, as shown
in Fig. 3. With this system, we can test the human-machine
function allocation scheme and the interface design in
different kinds of flight situation and multi tasks, as shown in
Fig. 4 and Fig. 5.

Figure 5. Simulation interface of scene outward cockpit

112
 rough grad, while the other two methods can get more
accurately value.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a methodology of cockpit design for civil
aircraft has been put forward. It includes three pivotal stages.
The first is HMFA that decide which and when a function
should be allocated to man or machine by ULMADM
method. Then we put the result of HMFA into application
through VMIC simulation platform. Finally, on the base of a
synthetic evaluation index system, three synthesis methods
were given to validate the design efficiency. The theoretical
analysis and simulation results show that HMCDM is
reasonable and effective. In conclusion, the model could
provide a profound theoretical value for practical
applications. The current model, through proper
modifications after more experimentation, will apply to
certain civil aircraft design project. We also believe
Figure 6. Synthetic evaluation index system for cockpit HMCDM is consequentially helpful for future researches on
civil aircraft cockpit.

V. HMI SYNTHETIC EVALUATION FOR CIVIL AIRCRAFT ACKNOWLEDGMENT

COCKPIT This work was funded by National Basic Research
Taking into account the characteristics of civil aircraft Program of China (973 Program: 2010CB734104).
HMI, numbers of HMI evaluation methods have been
compared with each other and the key technologies for
synthetic evaluation were identified. The index system
should be scientific, objective, complete, sensitive, REFERENCES
comparable, operable, and consistent with the evaluation [1] G. F. Ardey. “Fusion and display of data according to the design
method. Our index system was built up based on the experimentation philosophy of intuitive use,” NASA no.19990092816,
adequate analysis of displays and controllers, as shown in 1999.
Fig. 6. [2] R. A. Faerber, and T. J. Etherington. “Advanced flight deck for next
generation aircraft,” Piscataway NJ, Proceedings of DASC-
The weight is an important factor in the HMI synthetic AIAA/IEEE/SAE Digital Avionics Systems Conference,vol. 1, 1998,
evaluation index system because it reflects valuator’s pp. E42-1–E42-8.
cognition of important degree to the single index. The final [3] N. J. Mahwah. “Automation and human performance: Theory and
result of evaluation will change with the modification of applications,” Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996, pp. 117-136.
every weight. And how to avoid the bias of valuator’s is also [4] T P Michael. “Summary of a crew-centered flight deck design
a challenge for us to determine the weight. Generally, philosophy for high-speed civil transport (HSCT) aircraft,” NASA
methods to determine weights can be divided into three Langley Research Center, 2001.
categories: (1) subjective weighting, (2) Objective weighting, [5] W. Xu. “Psychological study on the interaction of human and
(3) Combination weighting. The last method combines the machine system in the automatic aircraft cockpit,” in Psychology
Science, vol. 26 ,September 2003, pp. 523–524.
advantages of subjective weighting and objective weighting,
[6] 767-36D user handbook, Shanghai Airline, 2011.
so it was adopted in our research.
[7] 737-700/-800 Crew user handbook, Shanghai Airline, 2010.
TABLE II. EVALUATION RESULTS OF THREE METHODS [8] A321 Crew user handbook, Shanghai Airline, 2009.
[9] P. Fitts. “Human engineering for an effective air-navigation and
Method Result
traffic-control system,” Washington: National Research Council
AHP 82.6949 (Fine)
Division of Anthropology and Psychology Committee on Aviation
SPA 4.2403 Level (Fine)
Psychology, 1951.
BPN 83.92 (Fine)
Average value of numbers of [10] R. Parasuraman, T. B. Sheriden, and C. D. Wickens. “A Model for
84.63 (Fine) Types and Levels of Human Interaction with Automation,” IEEE
experiments
Several synthesis methods were taken in our research: (1) Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part A: Systems and
Humans,vol. 30, March 2000, pp. 286–297.
Advanced Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) [15], (2) Set
[11] M. R. Endsley, and D. B. Kaber. “Level of automation effects on
Pair Analysis (SPA) [16], (3) BP Network (BPN). All three performance, Situation awareness and workload in a dynamic control
synthesis methods were taken to evaluation the simulation task,” in Ergonomics, vol. 42, May 1999, pp. 462–492.
system of certain civil aircraft cockpit. Consistent results [12] A. Zhang, Z. L. Tang, and C. Chao, “Man-machine function
were gotten in the three methods, as shown in Tab. II. From allocation based on uncertain linguistic multiple attribute decision
the result we can find that of SPA is suitable to evaluate the making,” in Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, vol. 24, December 2011,
pp. 816–822.

113
[13] T. L. Saaty. “The analytic hierarchy process: planning, priority [15] J. S. Finan, and W. J. Hurley, “Transitive calibration of the AHP
setting,” New York: Mcgraw-Hill, 1998. verbal scale,” in European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 112,
[14] Z. S. Xu. “An Overview of methods for determining OWA weight,” February 1999, pp. 367–372.
in International Journal of intelligent Systems, vol. 20, June 2005, pp. [16] Y. C. Ye, L. H. Ke, D. and Y. Huang, “Application and technique of
843–865. system synthetic evaluation,” Beijing: Metallurgy Industry Press,
2006.

114