Human Factors Department
The Human Factors department at the DLR Institute of Flight Guidance is the central department for the development and evaluation of innovative human-machine concepts in the field of aviation. The international and interdisciplinary team from the fields of psychology, engineering and computer science focuses on the human operator and plans and manages validations in real-time simulations, field trials and flight tests in an application-oriented research context.
At DLR's Institute of Flight Guidance, new operational concepts and technologies for the guidance of aircraft are being developed in order to increase safety, cost and eco-efficiency in aviation. Although work processes are becoming increasingly automated, humans remain of central importance as declarative knowledge carriers and flexible decision-makers capable of improvisation. However, technologies and "machines" are becoming ever more powerful and intelligent. They are taking over more and more of the operator's routine tasks and are increasingly acting as a digital colleague. The task and challenge for the Human Factors department is to design the new interaction between man and machine in such a way that it is ultimately more error-tolerant and efficient than the system before.
The Human Factors department is therefore actively involved in developing concepts and displays in order to analyse the effects of newly designed human-machine concepts on human performance and the performance of the overall system. Both standardised and self-developed questionnaires, behavioural observations, but also methods such as eye movement measurement and physiological measurements such as ECG, EEG and fNIRS are used. Depending on the research question and development status, these validations take place in so-called "human-in-the-loop" experiments in the laboratory, in fast-time and real-time simulations, as well as with prototype setups in field and flight tests.
An integral part of the department is the Data Science for ATM working group, which combines the institute's existing expertise in recording, managing and analysing heterogeneous data sets. Furthermore, AI and ML methods are conceptualised and validated in order to approach the goal of full automation via adaptive automation.
Current core topics of the department are valid operator status recording, the integration of artificial intelligence in the cockpit, remote & virtual tower operations, airport management, associated collaborative decision-making processes and the digitalisation and optimisation of airport processes.
The department's work follows the European Operational Concept Validation Methodology (E OCVM). The E-OCVM is the European standard for the conceptualisation and validation of research and development projects in air traffic management. It facilitates the accessibility and comparability of results and standardises the phases of the development process from the identification of operational and social needs and acceptance, conceptual design, review and evaluation through to technology transfer into operational use.