Vibrotactile Alert Systems for Aircraft Handoffs Acceptance in Air Traffic Control

Automated alert systems for air traffic controllers (ATCOs) often generate many nuisance visual warnings that ATCOs routinely ignore, potentially compromising safety. To explore an alternative modality, we tested vibrotactile alerts to warn ATCOs of aircraft entering their sector. In two experiments with 118 novice participants, Experiment 1 compared a visual color-change alert to a simple vibrotactile pulse. Using a high-difficulty scenario with nine handoffs, simple vibrotactile alerts elicited significantly faster response times than visual alerts without increasing mental workload or degrading performance. In Experiment 2 we added gradual and continuous vibrotactile alerts, but no further advantage emerged from their implementation. Nevertheless, all vibrotactile alerts reliably captured attention without adverse effects, demonstrating the feasibility of non-invasive tactile devices to augment or replace visual alerts and help ATCOs allocate their cognitive resources more effectively. However, this is an exploratory study at a pre-operational stage without direct practical implications for ATC planning and control.