Understanding the Human Side of Air Traffic Control
Quantifying how controllers scan, process, and respond under pressure.
FAA-funded human-factors research using Tobii eye tracking, behavioral performance data, and statistical analysis to study visual attention, scan behavior, workload, stress, and situational awareness in simulated air traffic control tower operations.
Organization
Embry-Riddle CERTS Lab / FAA
Year
2025–2026
Industry
Aviation Safety / Air Traffic Management / Human Factors
Scope
Human Factors · Eye Tracking · ATC · Data Analytics · Aviation Safety
The Challenge
Air traffic control depends on maintaining an effective visual scan across multiple information sources while workload and operational complexity are constantly changing.
The research examined how where controllers look, how long they look, and how their scan patterns evolve relate to performance and situational awareness.
The Work
At the CERTS Lab, I supported two FAA-funded research programs across:
120+ experimental datasets
Tobii eye-tracking data collection
Areas of Interest (AOI) analysis
dwell-time and fixation analysis
visual scan-pattern analysis
scan-transition behavior
behavioral and performance-data integration
data quality control
statistical analysis using SPSS
data processing with Python and SQL
The work contributed to research on visual scan consistency and controller performance in simulated ATC tower operations.
What It Means
The goal is to better understand how human attention changes under operational demand—and how those insights can inform training, interface design, workload management, and future human-machine systems in air traffic control.
