For a safe and efficient handling of the complex, networked processes in flight guidance and air traffic management, human operators such as pilots, air traffic controllers and airport personnel need assistance from automated tools and functions. Modern assistance tools are more and more incorporating elements of cognitive functions, e.g. situation assessment, planning , and decision making. Those domains were attributed exclusively to the human so far. The challenge is to design the respective assistance tools´ human –machine interfaces appropriately in order to ensure that they support the cognitive performance of the human operator in a most adequate way.
The aim is to install cooperation of human and machine intelligence by using principles of human-centred automation for adapting technical systems to the properties and abilities of the human operators.
HMI design includes as well to open up new interaction technologies such as superimposing computer generated information to the outside view ("Augmented Vision") or fully synthetic replication of the environment ("Virtual Reality"), for application in airborne and ground based human-machine systems.
Based on human factors research on assistance tools in flight guidance and air traffic management, we are offering consultancy and support for a wide variety of human-machine interface design issues, e.g.