NRA (national aeronautics and space administration research announcement) enhancing airplane state awareness for current and future operations within nasas aeronautics research mission directorate…

This federal contract award, valued at $1,499,979.00, was issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center to Honeywell International Inc.'s Aerospace Golden Valley (Advanced Technology) division. The contract supports NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) and the Technologies for Airplane State Awareness (TASA) sub-project of the Airspace Technologies Demonstration (ATD) project, which aims to reduce the likelihood of loss of airplane state awareness by flight crews.

Honeywell was selected as the prime contractor to contribute to one of the lines of investigation under the TASA sub-project. The award is a Cost Plus Fixed Fee contract type and does not have a set-aside designation. Honeywell has subcontracted a portion of the work to Architecture Technology Inc., a small business specializing in research, engineering, and technical services for the federal government.

NRA (national aeronautics and space administration research announcement) enhancing airplane state awareness for current and future operations within nasas aeronautics research mission directorate (armd), the technologies for airplane state awareness (tasa) sub-project of the airspace technologies demonstration (ATD) project in the airspace operations and safety program (isrp) has the responsibility to explore and develop new solution concepts that can reduce the likelihood of loss of airplane state awareness by flight crews. The tasa sub-project is a five-year activity with several lines of investigation underway or planned (FY15-FY19). The contracted effort described here contributes to one of these lines of investigation. Accident and incident rates for commercial aviation continue to be at or near their lowest levels in history and are far better than other modes of transportation. These low rates can be attributed in part to advances in the performance and reliability of aircraft and their associated onboard systems. However, recent studies by the commercial aviation safety team (cast) and the federal aviation administration (FAA), as well as recent events, indicate a concerning trend. This trend involves the effect of growing system complexity on flight crew understanding of the state of systems, subsystems, and interdependencies, particularly in sometimes rapidly-changing situations. Often, these effects are described using abstract terms such as loss of flight crew situation awareness, loss of automation mode awareness, and automation mode confusion. Post-hoc comments from pilots will mention surprises where the systems behaved in ways the flight crew did not expect, followed by comments such as why did IT do that, what is IT doing now and what will IT do next. As pilots have the final authority and responsibility for assuring safety-of-flight, an effective design should provide for manageable workload, comprehensible systems, and appropriate forms of intervention, especially in off-nominal situations. Despite this trend, recent years have seen a tremendous increase in the prevalence and use of information automation (i.e., decision support functions). Similarly, current plans for modernization call for an ever-greater reliance on information technology and autonomous functions. Thus, IT may become even more difficult for pilots to maintain awareness and to understand what the systems are doing, what they are intended to do, and what they are not intended to do. Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that aircraft systems are designed to be very reliable and pilots have grown to trust them, and in nearly all cases this trust is warranted. However, because humans are typically not good at monitoring for rare events, and IT is indeed the rare event that triggers unexpected system behavior (e.g., autopilot disconnect) due to failures, the crew may end up in a difficult, untrained, incomprehensible situation. This statement of work is the result of a proposal submitted by honeywell, INC., for award under the NASA headquarters aeronautics research mission directorate (armd) NASA research announcement (NRA) entitled research opportunities in aeronautics 2015, amendment NNH15ZEA001N, subtopic 2.2.