Person:

Feigh, Karen M.

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/71250

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Organizational Unit

Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

Evaluation of the Usability and Learnability of Vehicle Sketch Pad in Academia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-06-02) MacLeod, Stephanie F. ; Feigh, Karen M.

This paper describes an evaluation of the usability and learnability of Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP) within the academic aerospace engineering field. In addition, this paper provides suggestions on how Vehicle Sketch Pad should develop to better provide a desirable graphical user interface (GUI). Aerospace Engineering graduate students were asked to perform specific tasks within Vehicle Sketch Pad, and their performance, efficiency, and workload while completing these tasks were measured. The same students were asked to perform similar tasks within a more traditional computer aided design (CAD) tool, AutoDesk Inventor. At this time, how the user interfaced with the Inventor GUI and what features within the interface they liked and did not like were measured. Analysis of the results of this experiment showed that all three experience-based noise variables, undergraduate major, prior courses taken, and prior VSP experience, do impact the user’s performance, efficiency, and workload while completing a task in VSP. For example, those with a more in-depth Aerospace-related background perceived less workload than those with alternative backgrounds. Additionally, the VSP GUI proved to have a statistically significant impact on the user’s performance, efficiency, and workload. For example, those who experienced confusion due to the workspace layout expressed they felt utilizing VSP was a very mentally demanding task. As a result this analysis, a roadmap for VSP development opportunities was created. This roadmap included users’ opinions and the researcher’s observances of gaps within the VSP GUI in addition to suggestions based on the Inventor GUI.
Single-operator Multi-vehicle Human-Automation Interface Study dataset

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-05) Feigh, Karen M. ; Johnson, Eric N. ; Christmann, Hans Claus

With the achievement of autonomous flight for small unmanned aircraft, currently ongoing research is expanding the capabilities of systems utilizing such vehicles for various tasks. This allows shifting the research focus from the individual systems to task execution benefits resulting from interaction and collaboration of several aircraft. Given that some available high-fidelity simulations do not yet support multi-vehicle scenarios, a multi-vehicle framework has been introduced which allows several individual single-vehicle systems to be combined into a larger multi-vehicle scenario with little to no special requirements towards the single-vehicle systems. The created multi-vehicle system offers real-time software-in-the-loop simulations of vehicle teams across multiple hosts and enables a single operator to command and control a several unmanned aircraft beyond line-of-sight in geometrically correct two-dimensional cluttered environments through a multi-hop network of data relaying intermediaries. The related dissertation by Christmann presents the main aspects of the developed system: the underlying software framework and application programming interface, the utilized inter- and intrasystem communication architecture, the graphical user interface, and implemented algorithms and operator aid heuristics to support the management and placement of the vehicles.The effectiveness of the aid heuristics is validated through a human subject study which showed that the provided operator support systems significantly improve the operators' performance in a simulated first responder scenario. This dataset contains the collected data of that human subject study.
Decision Making with Incomplete Information Dataset

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07-09) Feigh, Karen M. ; Canellas, Marc ; Chua, Zarrin K.

Decision makers are often required to make decisions with incomplete information. In order to design decision support systems (DSSs) utilizing restrictiveness and guidance to assist decision makers in these situations, it is essential to understand how certain decision making strategies are affected by incomplete information. This paper presents the results of a simulation measuring the accuracy and effort of take-the-best (TTB) and Tallying alongside two normative-rational decision making strategies, weighted-additive (WADD) and equal-weighting (EW) in scenarios with varying levels of total information, information imbalance, dispersion, and dominance. The results show there is significant variability in the effort requirements of heuristic strategies which may diminish the arguments for effort-accuracy trade-offs. Additionally, heuristic strategies were shown to be closest in accuracy to normative-rational strategies when context features matched dynamic decision settings. Ultimately, methods for restrictiveness and guidance based on trade-offs between total information and information imbalance were shown to enable reductions in total information that actually increased the accuracy of heuristics.
Neural Networks for Assessment of Flight Deck Human-Automation Interaction Dataset

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-08-22) Feigh, Karen M. ; Sullivan, Katlyn B. ; Mappus, Rudolph Louis, IV ; Durso, Frank ; Fischer, Ute ; Pop, Vlad ; Mosier, Kathleen T. ; Morrow, Daniel G.
Development and Evaluation of an Automated Path Planning Aid

(Georgia Institute of Technology., 2012-11) Watts, Robert ; Christmann, Hans Claus ; Johnson, Eric N. ; Feigh, Karen M. ; Tsiotras, Panagiotis

Handling en route emergencies in modern transport aircraft through adequate teamwork between the pilot, the crew and the aircraft’s automation systems is an ongoing and active field of research. An automated path planning aid tool can assist pilots with the tasks of selecting a convenient landing site and developing a safe path to land at this site in the event of an onboard emergency. This paper highlights the pilot evaluation results of a human factors study as part of such a proposed automated planning aid. Focusing on the interactions between the pilot and the automated planning aid, the presented results suggest that a particular implementation of the pilot aid interface, which uses a simple dial to sort the most promising landing sites, was effective. This selectable sorting capability, motivated by the anticipated cognitive mode of the pilot crew, improved the quality of the selected site for the majority of the cases tested. Although the presented approach increased the average time required for the selection of an alternate landing site, it decreased the time to complete the task in the case of emergencies unfamiliar to the pilot crew.
Assessment of the accuracy of existing real-time wake vortex models

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-03-31) Sankar, Lakshmi N. ; Schrage, Daniel P. ; Feigh, Karen M. ; Huff, Brian ; Flick, Ashley ; Manivannan, Vasu
Design of cognitive work support systems for airline operations

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-08-20) Feigh, Karen M.

The thesis begins by examining the evolution of human performance modeling from the initial stimulus-response methods introduced during the industrial revolution to model factory worker productivity, continues with a discussion of the information processing model where human cognition was modeled as a series of actions carried out in a predefined order, and ends with the concept of cognitive control whereby cognition is not considered a context-free mental process but modeled as an individual's ability to maintain control under varying contexts and to counter the effects of disturbances. The results from a preliminary evaluation conducted to determine if CCMs could be measured and if they provided any additional insight cognitive work are presented, and reveal that CCMs could be measured and the self-assessed CCM varied as predicted. A design process is developed which utilizes the CCMs as representing specific patterns of activity, thus specifying the design requirements. Following this design process, a prototype is created and evaluated using a controlled experiment to examine the effectiveness of the CWSS. The experiment examines performance, workload, and patterns of activity, and has several interesting findings. The first is that performance was independent of the almost all of the predictors and covariates including participant's Self-assessed CCM, with the exception of CCM transitions. As in the preliminary study, participants who reported transitioning between CCMs also reported decreased performance, increased frustration and actually performed worse. Second, perceived performance varied linearly with a participant's self-assessed CCM, but not with the actual performance. Third, participants report lower levels of effort when using a CWSS DM that matched their operational CCM. Finally, the design process successfully created a CWSS with DMs which support strategic and tactical CCMs. Unfortunately, no specific performance improvements were found for cases where the participant's CCM matched the DM as hypothesized, calling into question the effectiveness of creating different design modes for performance improvement. This thesis presents two methods for measuring CCMs: one direct single scale and one indirect composite scale. The measurements correlate highly. Both have a high degree of face validity and user acceptance. In the end, the composite measure may be a more robust measure of CCM because it provides a greater degree of diagnosticity by specifically inquiring after different aspects of CCM and is less susceptible to an individual's interpretation of the relative importance of the multiple dimensions of CCMs included in the definitions.
Contextual Inquiry of a 50 Aircraft Regional Airline Systems Operation Center

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-02) Feigh, Karen M.

A contextual inquiry was conducted at the Systems Operations Control (SOC) of a regional airline with approximately 50 aircraft from the 8th-11th of November 2006. A total of 35 hours of direct observation were conducted with various members of the SOC Staff including the System Operations Control Shift Manager (SOCSM), the System Customer Service Manager (SCSM), the Dispatchers, and the Line Maintenance Planners (LMP). During the inquiry a wide variety of situations occurred: unscheduled maintenance delays, estimated ready time slips, a lightning strike, aircraft damage from a ground vehicle, a system-wide gate printer outage during a departure push, ATC delays, internet and subsequent ACARS outage, an unruly passenger disruption and turn back, and a sick dispatcher. The vast majority of these situations were handled as if they were no different from routine operations; however, there were moments when the SOC personnel were fully involved in the situation, and other minor tasks were being ignored or transferred to other personnel. The majority of high impact problems faced by the the airline’s SOC on a daily basis came from unscheduled maintenance or IT glitches. Unlike other airlines, ATC restrictions are not often an issue for this airline, although station curfews in southern California do place an additional constraint on the schedule recovery process. Similarly, weather was also only a minor issue during the contextual interview. Beyond the inevitable weather and maintenance interruptions, the majority of problems stemmed from software tools which limited the efficiency of the SOC personnel, and from procedures that required the SOCSM to do certain steps multiple times. For example, in order to keep the non-SOC personnel informed about the state of the airline, the SOCSM is required to run reports after each routing change and paste them into both email and the shift log. Additionally, the SOCSM is required to manually enter flight data to create new flights or to maintain existing ones. Similarly, the SOCSM is also required to manually enter and maintain maintenance segments for aircraft. The solution to these problems includes making better use of the current software’s functionality, investigating the actual information needs of the routing change recipient list, and incorporating additional automation to automatically create routing change reports and shift logs. The current software includes a capability to create new flights or maintenance segments using a correctly formatted text file. Using this capability would save much time in manual entry and minimize the number of typographical errors. Additional software should also be created to transition the incident reporting system and the shift log to an electronic database to facilitate data analysis. The SOCSM is currently responsible for posting any routing changes to a preset list via email. The actual information needs of these recipients should be reviewed to determine how frequently this information is actually required and whether or not a more scheduled reporting of all routing changes during a given time period might be adequate. Depending on the outcome, it might be possible to consolidate reports to once or twice a shift. Regardless, additional software should be created to automate the reporting process.
Contextual Inquiry of a Major US Airline Systems Operation Center

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-01) Feigh, Karen M.

A contextual inquiry was conducted at the airline’s Systems Operations Control (SOC) from the 13-15th of November 2006. A total of 26 hours of direct observation were conducted with various members of the SOC Staff including several of the Operations Coordinators, the ATC Coordinators, and the Operations Manager. During the inquiry a wide variety of situations occurred: unscheduled maintenance delays, estimated ready time slips, multiple hub ground delay programs, severely reduced arrival rates due to cross-directional winds, ground delay program revisions, and diversions of international flights. The vast majority of these situations were handled as if they were no different from routine operations; however, there were moments when the key SOC personnel were fully involved in the situation and the normal coordination and collaboration between the ATCCs, OCs, MOC and crew coordinators reverted to top down command and control. Thus the workload is not evenly distributed across all SOC personnel because of the geographic distribution of responsibilities. In addition to these observations this inquiry identified three issues with specific design implications, all centered around the OC’s work practices: overly involved coordination sessions with MOC, lack of control of printer output, and the use of schedule printouts as a primary source of solution information. All three of these issues lead to inefficiencies in the SOC operation, despite which, however, the SOC in general and the OCs in particular are able to remain effective. This report suggests that the OCs could become more efficient by shedding some of their printer maintenance tasks, extended MOC coordination sessions, and more effectively using software tools. In order to achieve this high level of effectiveness the SOC personnel actively adapt their roles and the balance of power depending on the level of operational disruption. With the addition of an MOC representative in the SOC or the availability of key maintenancerelated scheduling data, increased effectiveness may also be achievable under conditions of limited disruption. Changing the flow of messages from the printer to an on-screen system will help minimize the ‘busy’ work associated with maintaining the printer and keeping up with the printouts. Introducing new hardware and software tools to aid with the schedule sorting and filtering may also provide increased efficiency, especially for the more junior OCs.
Contextual Inquiry of a 100 Aircraft Regional Airline Systems Operation Center

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-09) Feigh, Karen M.

A contextual inquiry was conducted at the Systems Operational Center (SOC) of a Regional Airline with approximately 100 aircraft from the 24-27th of July 2006. A total of 30 hours of direct observation were conducted with various members of the SOC Staff including the Director of Systems Operations (DSO), the Manager of Customer Operations (MCO) and the Line Maintenance Planner (LMP). During the inquiry a wide variety of situations occurred: unscheduled maintenance delays, estimated ready time slips, a bird strike, a disruptive passenger requiring a cabin lock-down, a declared emergency due to oil temperature, taxi delays, weather delays, and brake-cooling delays. The vast majority of these situations were handled as if they were no different from routine operations; however, there were moments when the SOC personnel were pushed to their professional limits and the introduction of any other, even minor, issue could have caused severe disruptions to the schedule. The majority of problems faced by the the airline’s SOC on a daily basis came from lack of resources (planes and flight crew) and from inclement weather. During the inquiry, between 4-12 planes ( 6-9% of the fleet) were consistently out for unscheduled maintenance. Additionally, one one day during the observations 241 flight crew who were scheduled to fly were unavailable. Unlike other airlines, ATC restrictions are not often an issue for this airline, although station curfews in southern California do place an additional constraint on the schedule recovery process. Beyond the resource shortages and the inevitable weather interruptions, the majority of problems stemmed from software tools which limited the effectiveness of the SOC personnel. For example, several of the major software tools depend on different databases with limited connectivity, creating discrepancies between systems and requiring information to be entered multiple times. Additionally, the VisOps tool, used a primary measure of airline schedule adherence, does not support the logging of problems/issues, solution generation through the use of either advanced sort and search features, optimization algorithms and solution sharing. To make best use of the software tools on hand, especially VisOps, larger computer monitors are needed. The resolution at which the software tools must be set for visibility limits their usefulness with 19 inch monitors. Finally, none of the staff interviewed could indicate to any consistent quantitative feedback regarding the relative merits of their decisions on overall system performance. Instead, they often faced inquires about specific decisions which may only make sense when viewed from the overall context of the situation. Appropriate feedback could be provided as summary statistics regarding number of fights canceled, average delay and daily operational costs, which could be generated and displayed to them automatically.