Guidelines for speech interactions between pilot and cognitive assistant

Abstract

Over the last three years, the MITRE Corporation has been developing a cognitive assistant concept for pilots called Digital Copilot. Digital Copilot reduces pilot workload and increases safety by offloading pilot tasks, increasing task efficiency, and inferring pilot intent to provide the right information at the right time. As with many existing cognitive assistants (e.g., Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri), speech, both as a device input and output, is a major component of the interface. In this paper, we will introduce the Digital Copilot concept, discuss the challenges of speech-based interfaces in the cockpit, and suggest ten principals for the design of speech-based interfaces gleaned from literature review, flight testing, and simulator studies of Digital Copilot with General Aviation pilots.