A Comparison of Speech Input and Touch Screen for Executing Checklists in an Avionics Application

Abstract The amount of information available on the civil flight deck continues to increase. This has led to consideration of a range of input and control methods to ease the interaction between human and machine. Two of these, speech recognition and touch screens, are considered here. An experimental study is reported that compares the use of speech and touch for executing checklists in a flight deck simulator. It was found that the use of speech recognition disrupted the primary tracking task to a lesser extent than control through a touch screen, and was preferred by participants. However, checklist completion was slower when speech was used. The application of speech recognition and touch control technologies on the flight deck in light of these findings.