  Although increased automation has made it easier to control aircraft,
ensuring a safe interaction between the pilots and the autopilots is still a
challenging problem, especially in the presence of severe anomalies. Current
approach consists of autopilot solutions that disengage themselves when they
become ineffective. This may cause reengagement of the pilot at the worst
possible time, which can result in undesired consequences. In this paper, a
series of research studies that propose pilot-autopilot interaction schemes
based on the Capacity for Maneuver (CfM) concept, are covered. CfM refers to
the remaining capacity of the actuators that can be used for bringing the
aircraft to safety. It is demonstrated that CfM-based pilot-autopilot
interaction schemes, or Shared Control Architectures (SCA), can be promising
alternatives to the existing schemes. Two SCAs are tested in the experiments.
In SCA1, the pilot takes over the control from the autopilot using the
monitored CfM information. In SCA2, the pilot takes on the role of a supervisor
helping the autopilot whenever a need arises, based on the CfM information.
Whenever the aircraft experiences a severe anomaly, the pilot assesses the
situation based on his/her CfM monitoring and intervenes by providing two
control system parameter estimates to the autopilot. This increases the
effectiveness of the autopilot. Using human-in-the-loop simulations, it is
shown that CfM based interactions provides smaller tracking errors and larger
overall CfM. The subjects including a commercial airline pilot and several
university students are trained using a systematic procedure. Creation of new
cyber physical & human systems is inevitable along with deeper engagement with
the social science community so as to get better insight into human decision
making. The results reported here should be viewed as a first of several steps
in this research direction.
