| Two experiments are described that evaluate pilots' ability to understand and detect air traffic conflicts on a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI), both without (Experiment 1) and with (Experiment 2) the aid of an imperfect automated conflict alerting system. In Experiment 1, we explored the effects of conflict geometry on pilot conflict understanding, observing: (a) the increased difficulty of understanding with conflicts that occurred with slower speeds, a longer time into the future, and a longer distance into the future; (b) a tendency for pilots' judgments often to be conservative, judging that conflicts were both more risky, and would occur sooner, than was actually the case; (c) a "distance-over-speed" bias, such that two aircraft viewed farther apart, and converging rapidly were perceived as less risky than two aircraft that were closer and converging slower, even though the time till a conflict occurred was identical.; In Experiment 2, the difficult and easy conflict trials from Experiment 1 were replayed to a new set of pilots, now equipped with an imperfect automation detection alert, that provided them with three levels of predicted conflict risk, and occasionally made errors. Some pilots benefited from this automation, and others did not. Those who benefited did so when problems were difficult but not when they were easy. Furthermore, those automation benefits were observed only when automation was correct, but automation costs were not observed when the automation was in error. |
