The use of VR during testing of fatigue in air traffic controllers

Abstract

Air traffic control (ATC) aims to transport aeroplanes safely and efficiently through the airspace. This job requires the workers to stay alert and be constantly monitoring the traffic to avoid catastrophic incidents. It is therefore very important to track and manage fatigue among air traffic control workers during their shifts. It is also important to ensure optimal working conditions. However, it is difficult to conduct studies in a live air traffic control environment due to the sensitive work that takes place there around the clock. That is why a simulation of the complete working environment of the air traffic controllers in virtual reality (VR) can come in very handy. This thesis contributes to the project "A Reliable Real-time Fatigue Risk Management Framework in ATC" by constructing such a simulated environment, which will get used to test fatigue management strategies and how external factors in the work environment may affect the workers. Attention to detail is very important when modeling the virtual ATC center. Lighting, textures and sound were key elements to make the environment come to life. Various tools exist for the development of interactive applications and games in VR but the approach taken here was to implement all interactivity from scratch to gain deeper understanding of the fundamental VR paradigms and their implementation. This thesis work was done in collaboration with the ISAVA air navigation service, therefore it was possible to acquire valuable real-world reference data and gain direct inspiration from the air traffic controllers themselves. An interactive task was created inside the virtual control center as a tool for collecting data on the impact of the environment on people’s ability to carry out difficult work that required full attention. In the task, users navigate aeroplanes, represented by icons on a virtual screen, through a course where the goal is to safely navigate the planes from start to finish, by communicating with their crew. A short pre-pilot was run with experienced air traffic controllers to test and evaluate the system, including conducting a survey that will become a part of the main study. The principal contribution in this thesis work is the virtual air traffic control center, which is an essential component for the full project, an interactive virtual workstation which runs the task that users perform inside the virtual environment and finally a study script which includes an online survey and corresponding testing workflow from start to finish. Based on the feedback from the experts, overall the virtual ATC control center achieved a level of realism and usability that exceeded expectations with minimal simulator sickness symptoms. It represents a new state of the art in tools for conducting psychological studies in sensitive work environments.