Safety and controller workload assessment of lost C2 link contingency procedures for Seoul-Jeju route

초록

One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) is the absence of an on-board pilot. Since the aircraft is remotely controlled by the C2 Link, it is important to establish Lost C2 Link procedures and understand their impacts. In this paper, three Lost C2 Link procedures are developed on a route between Seoul and Jeju, one of the busiest air routes in the world. Then, human-in-the-loop simulations of an RPAS in Lost C2 Link situation are performed with a student controller and two experienced controllers. The simulation results are analyzed in terms of safety and controller workload metrics. The Return-to-Base scenarios showed the better scores in all the metrics. Well clear alerts, which is a safety metric devised for RPAS, happened only in the Continue-to-Destination scenario. Although the subjective surveys did not show notable workload differences between the three scenarios, the participating controllers issued more heading change commands to surrounding traffic in the Continue-to-Destination scenario than the others, which suggests that controller workload is higher. © 2018, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.