Experimental evaluation of a co-planar airborne separation display

An experiment was conducted to evaluate a concept for a co-planar self-separation display. The display shows performance and traffic constraints on maneuvering, as well as interactions of constraints between the two planar projections. In the experiment, a comparison was made between the new concept and a comparable display that did not show these interactions. Results showed that although pilots performed well with either display, performance was consistently better with the full display. Similar to previous studies, a preference for single-axis maneuvers was found, although this effect was smaller for difficult scenarios. A type of behavior persistent to constraint-based displays was also observed in this experiment: Pilots maneuver close to the constraint boundary, which can have an impact on safety when judgment errors are made.