The second HAAWAII demo day took place in Swanwick, UK on the 27th and 28th of September 2022 hosted by NATS. More than 50 attendees showed their interest in speech recognition and understanding in ATC both online and in person.
The main aim of the event was to showcase the results and achievements of the HAAWAII project over the last two years with a focus on workload metrics extraction and analysis. Not only did the project team present their successes, but also provided the opportunity, for attendees in person, to experience the speech recognition and understanding capabilities and try them for themselves. This demonstration was based on traffic data recorded in May 2022 in UK airspace. Participants could pretend to be a pilot and/or controller and put the software to test. One highlight was the real time read back error detection as well as the fast recognition speed and detailed HMI which showed both surveillance and recognised speech data in real time.
The audience was particularly impressed by the software’s reliable detection of various accents, different intonations and even phraseology deviations. Great interest was created especially from participants involved in ATC training and simulation service providers.
On the second day the audience was split into workshop groups, with topics such as adaptation to new environments, various applications and a deeper look into how speech data can be used to objectively measure controller workload. Rich discussions were had and the findings presented back to the entire audience.
In summary, the event provided a great opportunity to disseminate the project results amongst interested stakeholders and generated great discussions as to where to take this technology next to generate tangible benefits for the industry.