Supporting air-traffic controllers by delegating tasks

For several years, the need for air-traffic control has been continuously increasing. In order to maintain aircraft safety, different support tools have been built and tested by our laboratory. Various criticisms have been made by the professional controllers who have tested these tools. Our conviction is that it is necessary to conceive a more cooperative tool that would allow "true team work" to be established between air-traffic controllers and their support tools, by making the support tool part of the team rather than a substitute for air-traffic controllers. This paper presents a new support tool based on the delegation of tasks, our experiment with professional controllers, and the analysis of their use of the support system and the consequences of their workload