In the current generation electronic primary flight displays, all variables are scaled and displayed without regard to the inherent relationship between airplane flight path and speed related variables, and without regard how the controls of thrust and elevator should be used. This leaves the pilot to solely rely on his experience and skills to realize the desired state of aircraft speed and flight path. The goal of the ecological Energy Management Primary Flight Display, is to make constraints and complex relationships between various flight dynamics display variables visible and directly actionable to the pilot. In this context, the energy domain is identified as a means to normalize and visualize the relationships between speed and altitude targets, acceleration, vertical speed and flight path angle and to bring out control guidance cues for the efficient use of elevator and throttle control. The feasibility of such an ecological primary flight display is addressed through an analysis of the scaling dependencies. Following an overview of the design issues and required design decisions, the practicality is addressed through an example implementation and a comparison with existing display formats and design recommendations. Finally, recommendations for research are provided to assess the suitability and effectiveness of such a display in improving pilot control performance and workload.
This paper addresses the design and implementation of a conceptual Enhanced/Synthetic Vision Primary Flight Display format. The goal of this work is to explore the means to provide the operator of a UAV with an integrated view of the constraints for the velocity vector, resulting in an explicit depiction of the margins/boundaries of the multi-dimensional maneuver space. For non-time-critical situations, this is expected to provide support when the operator has the authority to manually set avoidance maneuvers, or approve, veto or modify velocity vector changes proposed by the automation. The integration of the upper bounds of the maneuver space, resulting from energy constraints, and the lower bounds, resulting from terrain will be illustrated. Additionally, the application of a maneuver cost function will be discussed, for identifying and prioritizing conflict avoidance options from an integrated multi-dimensional maneuver space, and communicating those to the operator. Although the integrated avoidance functions have been developed with the UAV application in mind, they have equal merit for manned aircraft. The need for specific GUI elements depends on the level of authority of the system and the role of the operator/pilot, which may differ between manned and unmanned applications.
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