Discriminability of Flight Maneuvers and Risk of False Decisions Derived from Dual Choice Decision Errors in a Videopanorama-Based Remote Tower Work Position

Future remote control of small low traffic airports (Remote Tower Operation, RTO) will rely on the replacement of the conventional control tower out-of-windows view by a panoramic digital reconstruction with high resolution and pan-tilt zoom (PTZ) video cameras as basic sensor system. This provides the required visual cues for aerodrome traffic control without a local control tower. Here we show that with a 2 arcmin-per-pixel resolution panorama system even with the use of a manually controlled (analog) PTZ camera (with PAL TV-resolution and selectable zoom factor setting) experiments under operational conditions indicate a significant increase of decision errors under RTO as compared to the conventional out-of-windows view. We quantify the corresponding discrimination difference by means of detection theory (discriminability, decision criteria) and Bayes inference (risk of false decisions) using the response errors of tower controllers with regard to dual choice decision tasks. The results extend the performance and subjective data analysis of safety related maneuvers in 11.