controllers. Proc. of CHI’ 13. ACM, 2013.

7. Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., and Kirsh, D. Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. ACM Trans.

Comput.-Hum. Interact. 7, 2 (June 2000), 174–196.

8. Hornecker, E. and Buur, J. Getting a grip on tangible interaction: A framework on physical space and social interaction. Proc. of CHI’06. ACM, 2006.

 

Jean-Luc Vinot is an associate professor at the Interactive Computing Laboratory at ENAC in Toulouse. He is a graphic designer and an HCI expert in the fields of ATC and aeronautics. His current research focuses on the design of safety-critical systems, graphical user interfaces, and tangible interaction.

Catherine Letondal is a researcher at the Interactive Computing Laboratory at ENAC in Toulouse. After completing a Ph.D. on participatory programming, she studied the use of the digital pen by contemporary music composers. Her current research themes are tangible interaction and adaptation of software design processes to various contexts. → [e-mail]

Rémi Lesbordes is both an air traffic controller and an HMI expert for the French civil aviation authority (DSNA). Co-founder of the Strip' TIC project, he also works on 3D and augmented reality applied to the integration of drones in real traffic. → [e-mail]

Stéphane Chatty is the head of the Interactive Computing Lab ( lii-enac.fr) at Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC, Toulouse, France) and a scientific advisor at IntuiLab ( intuilab.com, Labège, France). He specializes in engineering methods, tools, and theories for the design of highly interactive and critical systems.

Stéphane Conversy is a professor of computer science at the University of Toulouse - ENAC. His research focuses on the design and programming of interactive tools. He received his Ph.D. from University of Paris-Sud and his Habilitation from the University of Toulouse.

Christophe Hurter is an associate professor at the Interactive Computing Laboratory at ENAC in Toulouse. His research interests lie in the areas of information visualization and HCI, with focus on visualization of multivariate data in space and time, the design of scalable visual interfaces, and the development of pixel-based algorithms. → [e-mail]

writing area by pointing at the right side of the virtual strip underneath.

Tangible computation and cognition.

Currently, controllers need to perform error-prone calculations and take significant time to check their results.

Since the traffic is really intense, Tessa had to put arriving planes in holding patterns. The strips are organized in two stacks at approach beacons MOLEK and ODRAN, but our tactical controller wants to optimize the arrival sequence in order to fill potential gaps. As she lays the strips down, the system automatically calculates the stack exit time—that the pilot needs to know—and displays it beside each strip.

She can rearrange the strips as needed to produce the optimal sequence.

This tangible calculation illustrates how computing support can complement physical manipulations, rather than replace them.

TANGIBLE INTERACTIVE
WORKSPACE

Strip’ TIC gave us the opportunity to explore mixed interaction in a context where effective and safe physical interactions already exist. Unlike usual TUI approaches that rely on the mapping of physical objects to virtual objects, coherence in Strip’TIC relies on

the mapping of virtual objects to physical

objects. Both physical objects and their associated manipulations have an inner coherence due to their cognitive role as external representations— for controllers, the means of traffic planning and the programming of actions. A consequence is that physical objects represent cognitive objects rather than virtual ones [ 6].

Additionally, the familiar handling of paper strips on the stripboard space allows controllers to manage a mixed representation space with a perceptual fusion of both physical support and marks (printed and inked), and digital data (projected) in the same movement.

Finally, the manipulation of digital paper strips on the stripboard supports externalization of cognitive concerns , since the strips and their spatial arrangements offload the controller’s cognitive processes related to their responsibilities toward the flights crossing their sector [ 2, 4, 5, 7].

Designed with concrete goals,
Strip’TIC emerged as an example
of what we call tangible augmented
reality. In terms of augmented
reality, dynamic top and bottom
projections augment the real physical
strips by providing real-time data
and feedback. As for tangibility,
the strips are also efficient and
graspable interfaces that control the
projection, a sort of tangible window
manager. In fact, by combining
externalization and lightweight
and embodied interactions in
physical space, together with
concurrent access, non-fragmented
visibility, collaborative awareness,
and reconfigurability, Strip’TIC
illustrates several of the main
themes of tangible interaction [ 8]
and distributed cognition [ 7].

Strip’TIC is a research prototype, and even though our experimental results are very promising, experience shows that it is difficult to predict its operational fate. What is sure is that it improves our understanding of the properties and new potential of paper strips. It demonstrates that the transition from a disconnected to a fully connected digital system, beyond the opposition between paper and digital, can now occur. It also suggests that augmented reality and tangible interaction can be a worthy solution for ATC.

 

Endnotes

1. Mertz, C., Chatty, S., and Vinot, JL. The influence of design techniques on user interfaces: The DigiStrips experiment for air traffic control. Proc. of HCI-Aero. 2000.

2. Mackay, W.E. Is paper safer? The role of paper flight strips in air traffic control.

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 6, 4

(December 1999).

3. Hurter, C., Lesbordes, R., Letondal, C., Vinot, JL., and Conversy, S. Strip’ TIC: Exploring augmented paper strips for air traffic controllers. Proc. of AVI’ 12. ACM,

2012.

4. Kirsh, D. The intelligent use of space.

Artificial Intelligence (1995).

5. Harper, R. H.R. and Hughes, J. A. What a f-ing system! Send ‘em all to the same place and then expect us to stop ‘em hitting”: Making Technology Work in Air Traffic Control, Technical Report EPC-1991-125.

6. Letondal, C., Hurter, C., Lesbordes, R., Vinot, JL., and Conversy, S. Flights in my hands: Coherence concerns in designing Strip’ TIC, a tangible space for air traffic