Development and Testing of a Collaborative Display for UAV Traffic Management and Tower Control

The forecasted increase in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) traffic in lower airspace raises concerns for maintaining the safety of flight operations at towered airports. Regulatory bodies envision a collaborative environment between UAV Traffic Management (UTM) and air traffic management to facilitate safe UAV operations within controlled airspace. This will require the development of an interface for tower controllers to interact with UTM concerning UAV flights within the aerodrome control zone. In this study we present relevant design considerations for such a display and introduce a concept for dynamically segregating UAVs from manned aircraft using geofences. Remote human-in-the-loop simulations with air traffic controllers were performed to test our assumptions. Results confirm the utility of several interface elements, in particular UAV priority and routing indications. Furthermore, results show that providing controllers with a grid of geofences was considered a useful tool in re-routing UAVs. Surprisingly, the control strategy for geofences was not different from existing control strategies for manned aircraft. Performance could be improved by increasing transparency and predictability of UAV routing with novel display elements, as well as providing more authority over UAV locomotion. Further work is needed to investigate controller behavior and performance in an environment which requires oversight of both UAV and manned traffic, higher levels of UTM sophistication as well as simulating a broader range of UAV missions and scenarios.