Research case study

Human-AI Collaboration in ATC — Contrail Avoidance with Eye Tracking

Studying air traffic controller attention management with eye tracking during radar monitoring and coordination with pilots.

Period: 2026 – Present
Status: Ongoing
Topics: ATC · Eye Tracking · Contrails · Sustainability · Human-AI Interaction

Conceptual research problem: competing radar monitoring, pilot communication and decision-support demands on controller attention — Conceptual illustration of the research question, not experimental data or a validated attention-management intervention.

One-line summary

An ongoing study of how air traffic controllers allocate attention across radar information, pilot coordination and decision-support guidance, using eye tracking to inform attention-aware interface design.

At a glance

01Problem: A controller must allocate attention between traffic information, coordination with pilots and additional decision-support information; adding guidance does not guarantee that it will be attended to at the right time.
02Context: The supplied experimental setup involves two pilots and one air traffic controller. Eye-tracking glasses record the controller's visual attention during radar-based tasks.
03My contribution: The research focuses on characterising controller attention allocation to inform attention-aware decision support, including the presentation of contrail-avoidance guidance.
04Outcome: An ongoing attention-management research programme with an experimental setup; no quantified workload reduction, safety benefit or intervention effectiveness is claimed here.

Three-minute walkthrough

The research problem: managing the controller's limited attention

The central question is attention management, not simply adding another AI recommendation to a radar screen. Controllers monitor changing traffic while coordinating with pilots. Decision-support information, including contrail-avoidance guidance in this project, must compete with those existing demands. The research asks what information receives attention and how the interface can support relevant information seeking without assuming that an extra panel is automatically useful.

The experimental setup: two pilots and one controller

In the user-specified setup, the two participants on the left are pilots and the rightmost participant is the air traffic controller. The controller wears eye-tracking glasses while working with the radar display. The reconstructed illustration below simplifies the room and people and retains the reference display's plan-view traffic layout; it is not the original experimental photograph or a pixel-exact screen capture.

Reconstructed experimental setup with two pilots on the left, the controller on the right wearing eye-tracking glasses, and labelled radar display — Figure 1. Reconstructed academic cartoon based on the supplied photograph and device reference. Arrows identify the participant roles, radar display and **eye-tracking** glasses; no gaze results are depicted.

Eye tracking makes visual attention observable

The supplied device reference illustrates wearable eye tracking for quantifying visual attention allocation. Gaze observations can describe which display regions are inspected and how attention moves between them. Gaze alone does not establish comprehension, decision correctness or a causal reduction in workload.

Original eye-tracking glasses reference with Japanese annotation describing quantification of visual attention allocation — Figure 2. Original supplied device reference. The Japanese annotation explains that eye tracking can quantify visual attention allocation.

Original experimental material

Original photograph of the radar-based experimental room supplied by the researcher — Figure 3. Original supplied photograph, preserved unchanged for comparison with the three-role reconstructed schematic. The background observer is omitted from the cartoon; the cartoon is not a literal participant-count transcription of this photograph.

Radar display and existing research context

Existing radar plan-view display used in the ATC eye-tracking research — Figure 4. Existing radar-display material retained from the previous research page.

Existing ATC motivation slide — Figure 5. Existing project motivation slide, retained as background material rather than evidence of measured attention-management effects.

Research direction, not a demonstrated intervention benefit

This ongoing work aims to ground decision-support design in what controllers actually attend to. The materials shown establish the research question and experimental setting, not a tested deployment or quantified improvement. Attention-management interfaces and the timing of AI guidance remain design questions to evaluate.