Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nextgen Flight Deck Data Comm: Auxiliary Synthetic Speech Phase I, Tracy Lennertz, Judith Bürki-Cohen, Andrea L. Sparko, Nickolas D. Macchiarella, Jason Kring, Mike Coman, Tom Haritos, Jeffry Alvarado

Publications

Data Comm—a text-based controller-pilot communication system—is critical to many NextGen improvements. With Data Comm, communication becomes a visual task. Interacting with a visual Data Comm display may yield an unsafe increase in head-down time, particularly for single-pilot operations. This study examined the feasibility of supplementing Data Comm with synthetic speech. To this end, thirty-two pilots flew two experimental scenarios in a Cessna 172 Flight Training Device. In one scenario, ATC communication was with a text-only Data Comm display, in the other, communication was with a text Data Comm display with synthetic speech that read aloud each message (i.e., text+speech). Pilots …