Accuracy Assessment of Air Traffic Conflict Probe Prototype for Operational Evaluations

This study is part of the Separation Management research program, whose goals include improving the FAA’s operational Conflict Probe function. Conflict Probe alerts air traffic controllers to conflicts, or situations where aircraft will be too close to each other. The present study is one link in a chain of research efforts. We used the results of a meta-analysis of Human Factors literature on automation accuracy (Rein, Masalonis, Messina, & Willems, in press) in conjunction with FAA mathematical studies on the accuracy of the current Conflict Probe prototype (Crowell, Fabian, Young, Musialek, & Paglione, 2011; Crowell & Young, 2012) and determined the acceptability of the prototype’s conflict detection performance. The present results will feed upcoming operational research including a human-in-the loop (HITL) simulation in which the prototype will be used, by helping establish whether the prototype was “good enough” to improve joint human-automation system performance. In addition...