Cognitive modelling of pilot errors and error recovery in flight management tasks

This paper presents a cognitive modelling approach to predict pilot errors and error recovery during the interaction with aircraft cockpit systems. The model allows execution of flight procedures in a virtual simulation environment and production of simulation traces. We present traces for the interaction with a future Flight Management System that show in detail the dependencies of two cognitive error production mechanisms that are integrated in the model: Learned Carelessness and Cognitive Lockup. The traces provide a basis for later comparison with human data in order to validate the model. The ultimate goal of the work is to apply the model within a method for the analysis of human errors to support human centred design of cockpit systems. As an example we analyze the perception of automatic flight mode changes.