Involving Hearing, Haptics and Kinesthetics into Non-visual Interaction Concepts for an Augmented Remote Tower Environment

We investigated the contribution of specific HCI concepts to provide multimodal information to Air Traffic Controlers in the context of Remote Control Towers (i.e. when an airport is controlled from a distant location). We considered interactive spatial sound, tactile stimulation and body movements to design four different interaction and feedback modalities. Each of these modalities have been designed to provide specific solutions to typical Air Traffic Control identified use cases. Sixteen professional Air Traffic Controllers (ATCos) participated in the experiment, which was structured in four distinct scenarios. ATCos were immersed in an ecological setup, in which they were asked to control (i) one airport without augmentations modalities, (ii) two airports without augmentations, (iii) one airport with augmentations and (iv) two airports with augmentations. These experimental conditions constituted the four distinct experimental scenarios. Behavioral results shown a significant increase in overall participants’ performance when augmentation modalities were activated in remote control tower operations for one airport.