CONF
Helmke_ATM2023_2023/IDIAP
Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding for Radar Label Maintenance Support Increases Safety and Reduces Air Traffic Controllers? Workload
Helmke, Hartmut
Kleinert, Matthias
Ahrenhold, Nils
Ehr, heiko
Mühlhausen, Thorsten
Ohneiser, Oliver
Motlicek, Petr
Prasad, Amrutha
Zuluaga-Gomez, Juan
Klamert, Lucas
Dokic, Jelena
Pinska Chauvin, Ella
air traffic controller’s workload
Artificial intelligence
Automatic Speech Recognition
automatic speech understanding
human factors
saftety
situation awareness
EXTERNAL
https://publications.idiap.ch/attachments/papers/2023/Helmke_ATM2023_2023.pdf
PUBLIC
Eurocontrol (Europe), FAA (U.S.) - Fifteenth USA/Europe Air Traffic Management Research and Development Seminar (ATM2023)
Savannah, Georgia, USA
2023
https://www.atmseminar.org/upcoming-seminar/papers-and-presentations/
URL
Air traffic controllers (ATCos) from Austro Control together with DLR quantified the benefits of automatic speech recognition and understanding (ASRU) on workload and flight safety. As the baseline procedure, ATCos enter all clearances manually
(by mouse) into the aircraft radar labels. As part of our proposed solution, the ATCos are supported by ASRU, which is capable of delivering the required inputs automatically. The ATCos are only prompted to make corrections, when ASRU provided incorrect
output. Overall amount of time required for manually inserting clearances, i.e., by clicking and selecting the correct input on the screen, reduced from 12,800 seconds during 14 hours of simulations time down to 405 seconds, when ATCos were supported by ASRU. A reduction of radar label maintenance time through
ASRU might not be surprising given earlier experiments. However, a factor greater than 30 outperforms earlier findings. In addition, this paper also considers safety aspects, i.e., how often ATCos support provided an incorrect input into the aircraft radar
labels with and without ASRU. This paper shows that ASRU systems based on artificial intelligence are reliable enough for their integration into air traffic control operations rooms.