Digital Assistant Concept for Enroute Air Traffic Management

Enroute Air Traffic Management in Sweden is facing both increasing air traffic and a predicted shortage of Air Traffic Management staff. Automation in the form of a Digital Enroute Air Traffic Management Assistant (DEMA) could support work by autonomously carrying out some tasks, while coordinating with and informing the Air Traffic Controller (ATCO), with sensitivity to current workload. This paper describes our DEMA concept, detailing how a digital assistant differs from automation in general, on a theoretical level. It also describes a set of operational concepts together with human-ai interaction and collaboration concepts. A sub-set of concepts were implemented in the UTM CITY Simulator as a high-fidelity prototype, so that the scenarios and DEMA interactions could be played out. To assess the DEMA concepts, a two-step procedure was carried out with a group of Air traffic controllers. First, a test session was carried out as a human-in-the-loop simulation, where they individually tested two situations where traffic could be delegated to DEMA. The participants then made individual reflections on DEMA, which they brought up in the subsequent workshop session on the same day as the test. During this workshop, the potential for DEMA in different settings, and alternative DEMA use cases were designed and discussed. The workshop ended with a new concept implemented as a testable prototype in the simulator.