Assistant systems for aircraft guidance: cognitive man-machine cooperation

This paper presents the concept of cognitive assistant systems which represents an approach to ensure the highest degree possible of situation awareness of the flight crew as well as a satisfactory workload level. This concept offers the solution to counteract susceptibility to pilot errors typical of lack of attention or other cognitive limitations. It is founded on cognitive system engineering. This technology enables a cockpit design in order to systematically comply with the requirements of ‘Human-Centred Automation (HCA)’. The underlying approach behind the concept has become real with the development of the cockpit assistant system prototype family CASSY/CAMA as described in this paper. CASSY/CAMA has been extensively tested in a flight simulator and successfully field tested with the ATTAS (Advanced Technologies Testing Aircraft System) of the DLR. Some of the test results with CAMA will be presented in this paper.