The University of Oklahoma
Human Technology Interaction Center

Aligning Human Needs and Technology
About | People | Education | Projects | Sponsorships

 

HCI Project

Community Networks Project

Flight Organizer & Planning Aid (FOPA)

NSF REU Program

 

FOPA - Flight Organizer and Planning Aid

Description | Screen shots | Experiments | Publications

FOPA (pronounced foe paw) is a new computer interface designed to aid air traffic controllers in their development of strategic plans. FOPA is intended as a next generation tool to enable en route air traffic controllers to quickly identify, classify, and negotiate sequences of aircraft.  The interface was designed, built and tested by John Canning, Scott Gronlund, Joakim Johansson, Peter Moertl (all from the University of Oklahoma) and Mike Dougherty (formerly of OU but now at the University of Maryland, Dept. of Psychology). The interface consists of two dynamically linked displays: One consisting of a radar display (similar in appearance to the DSR radar display currently used at FAA en route centers), and a second consisting of a planning aid called the flight organizer. The flight organizer allows aircraft to be easily categorized and sequenced. The aircraft in both displays are color coded based on their categories. As of the Summer of 1999, FOPA is still in the testing phase of development. If you are interested in learning more about this interface, research reports can be obtained from John Canning (jcanning@ou.edu), Scott Gronlund (sgronlund@ou.edu), Peter Moertl (pmoertl@ou.edu) or Mike Dougherty (mdougherty@psyc.umd.edu) Below are a few snapshots of air traffic controllers using FOPA and traditional flight strips in a simulated air traffic control experiment. Screen shots of the two FOPA displays are also shown.

FOPA Displays
The FOPA displays - This picture shows the configuration of the FOPA displays. The leftmost screen is the Radar Display, and the screen to the right is the Flight Organizer display. Both 21" monitors are connected to the same Sun workstation, and the user can move the pointer between the screens using the trackball.

FOPA Setup
The FOPA setup - Here we can see more of the FOPA experimental setup. The participant (Planner) can be seen using the interface. To his right, the Tactician uses the PC-based DSREM software to implement the plan that the Planner creates. They communicate freely, but only the Tactician interacts with the pilots.

Flight Organizer
The Flight Organizer - The top part contains 'queueing blocks' that hold aircraft 'tokens'. The tokens are minimized version of the strips, and the full version can be retrieved and shown in the bottom part by either highlighting (moving the pointer over) or marking (clicking on) a token or track. There is a one-to-one correspondence between tokens (in the Flight Organizer) and tracks (in the Radar View) because they both represent the same aircraft. For each corresponding token-track pair, the colors in both displays are always the same and marking the aircraft by pointing and clicking in one display marks both representations.
Note: the screen shot shown here is a truncated version of the full display seen by the controllers.

Radar View
The Radar View (left display) - On the right are three sliders: Range (Zoom in/out), Altitude Filter, and Leader Line length (0-10 minute projection).
Note: the screen shot shown here is a truncated version of the full display seen by the controllers.


Overlapped FOPA and radar View
This overlapping view shows the correspondence between tokens in the flight organizer display and the tracks in the radar display.  Tokens are marked with a check while tracks are marked with a thin outline.  The one highlighted token has a yellow border while the one highlighted track has an opaque, gray background for the data block.  These are truncated views of the displays as well


ImplementationFOPA was coded in C/C++ on a Sun/UNIX platform, using a special HCI library called InterMAPhics, which is a product of Gallium Software.

Description | Screen shots | Experiments | Publications

FOPA is the result of collaboration by the Human Technology Interaction Center, the Department of Psychology, the School of Computer Science, all at the (University of Oklahoma), and Federal Aviation Administration's Civil Aeromedical Institute (CAMI) in Oklahoma City. 

   
© 1999 Human-Technology Interaction Center, University of Oklahoma. All Rights Reserved. E-mail