Abstract
The aim of this study is to develop a new cockpit controlled language for future Airbus aircraft by using psycholinguistic testing to optimize pilot comprehension. Pilots are aided by cockpit messages in order to deal with different situations during aircraft operations. The current controlled languages used on the Airbus aircraft have been carefully constructed to avoid ambiguity, inaccuracy, inconsistency, and inadequacy [21] in order to ensure the safety of the navigation, operational needs, and the adaptability of the human-computer interaction to different situations in the cockpit. However, this controlled language has several limitations, mostly due to small screen sizes (limited number of words and sentences) and is highly codified (non-conforming to natural language syntax, color-coded, etc.) so that it requires prior pilot training in order to achieve fluency. As future cockpit design is under construction, we might be looking at a different flexibility margin: less limitations, different screen sizes, less coding, etc.
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Notes
- 1.
For confidentiality reasons complete Airbus alarms cannot be released here. The lines in Fig. 1 are assembled from different alarms, and they are representative of the various types of information in the corpora.
- 2.
- 3.
One main reason for the corpus being our starting point is that we are doing research on an applicative basis. As such, we must bear in mind that our end users rely on specific corpora and functions, and we have to take into consideration the potential evolution of their learning process rather than enforcing radical change.
- 4.
Readability tests designed to indicate how difficult a reading passage in English is to comprehend. They rely on measuring word length and sentence length to provide a grade level of the text or a reading ease level.
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Jahchan, N., Condamines, A., Cannesson, E. (2016). To What Extent Does Text Simplification Entail a More Optimized Comprehension in Human-Oriented CNLs?. In: Davis, B., Pace, G., Wyner, A. (eds) Controlled Natural Language. CNL 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9767. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41498-0_7
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