An Analysis of Cognitive Demands in Ship-Based Helicopter-Landing Maneuvers

Minotra, Dev; Feigh, Karen M.

doi:10.4050/jahs.65.042009

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Fig 1A illustrates that such FOV occlusion induces pilots to preferentially use the door windows (and chin windows when available) during approaches and landings as reported by [ 22 ] and to rely on other crew members who look through the side door and provide information to the pilot. Information provided by yellow dog on the flight deck via radio communication [ 23 ] imposes an additional load on the pilot who limits or even generally cuts off the communication with the ship’s crew in the last phase before the landing. This situation makes the reduction of horizontal and vertical FOV [ 24 ] detrimental to rotorcraft control.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

et al. 2021

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Helicopter landing on a ship is a visually regulated "rendezvous" task during which pilots must use fine control to land a powerful rotorcraft on the deck of a moving ship tossed by the sea while minimizing the energy at impact. Although augmented reality assistance can be hypothesized to improve pilots’ performance and the safety of landing maneuvers by guiding action toward optimal behavior in complex and stressful situations, the question of the optimal information to be displayed to feed the pilots’ natural information-movement coupling remains to be investigated. Novice participants were instructed to land a simplified helicopter on a ship in a virtual reality simulator while minimizing energy at impact and landing duration. The wave amplitude and related ship heave were manipulated. We compared the benefits of two types of visual augmentation whose design was based on either solving cockpit-induced visual occlusion problems or strengthening the online regulation of the deceleration by keeping the current τ˙ variable around an ideal value of -0.5 to conduct smooth and efficient landing. Our results showed that the second augmentation, ecologically grounded, offers benefits at several levels of analysis. It decreases the landing duration, improves the control of the helicopter displacement, and sharpens the sensitivity to changes in τ˙. This underlines the importance for designers of augmented reality systems to collaborate with psychologists to identify the relevant perceptual-motor strategy that must be encouraged before designing an augmentation that will enhance it.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

et al. 2021

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“…In the next step, the dynamic ship motion was simulated using empirical data. The U.S. Office of Naval Research gathered these data under the Systematic Characterization of the Naval Environment (SCONE) program [43] and kindly made them available to the authors for scientific research purposes. Previous works that demonstrated autonomous recovery of helicopter from ships have also used the SCONE data [44] [45] [46].…”

Section: Figure 3: Hdd Display Configurationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The cognitive challenges associated with the helicopter ship dynamic interface have been well documented [1] [43] [56]. The cues and references associated with the ship and the external environment can often be limited, obscured, or uncertain.…”

Section: Pilot Assistance System Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Piloted Simulation of Helicopter Shipboard Recovery with Visual and Control Augmentation

Mehling

Halbe

Gasparac

et al. 2021

AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum

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Shipboard launch and recovery of helicopters continue to pose operational challenges even for experienced pilots. The factors affecting pilot workload include unsteady ship motion, the influence of ship air wakes on helicopters, insufficient visual cues, and adverse weather conditions. The goal of the current research is to investigate novel visual and control augmentation techniques and evaluate their impact on pilot workload and handling qualities for shipboard recovery operations. This paper first outlines a helicopter-ship dynamic interface model developed and integrated into our existing rotorcraft simulation environment (ROSIE). It then describes a visual augmentation concept using a see-through helmet-mounted display (HMD) system for enhancing the pilot's visual cueing environment during the shipboard approach and landing tasks. Next, it describes the synthesis of robust nonlinear control laws for achieving advanced helicopter response types with predicted Level 1 handling qualities. Lastly, the paper reports the results of simulation tests of maritime mission task elements by four experimental test pilots with different levels of augmentation and under different environmental conditions. Results on navigation performance, workload indices, and handling quality ratings indicate a decreased workload and improved handling qualities to almost Level 1 with the assistance of the visual and control augmentation system. Moreover, all piltos stated a higher situational awareness while operating in degraded visual environment conditions using visual and control augmentation.

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“…The semi-structured interviews performed in this analysis were comprised of three unique stages: 1) Surfacelevel interview and task diagram, 2) Weather incident overview, and 3) Knowledge audit [13,14]. Accordingly, the interviews were separated into distinct sessions by stage to prevent mental fatigue for both the interviewer and the interviewee.…”

Section: Interview Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Adverse Weather on Commercial Helicopter Pilot Decision-Making and Standard Operating Procedures

Speirs

Ramee

Payan

et al. 2021

Aiaa Aviation 2021 Forum

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Helicopter pilots face unique challenges with regard to adverse weather when compared to fixed-wing pilots. Rotorcraft typically operate at lower altitudes in off-field areas that are not always well covered by weather reporting stations. Although recent technological advances have increased the amount of weather data that pilots can access in the cockpit, weather remains a factor in 28% of fatal helicopter accidents. In this work, commercial helicopter pilots were surveyed and interviewed to better understand how they gather and process weather information, what the perceived limitations of current weather tools are, and how their decision-making process is affected by the information they gather and/or receive. Pilots were found to use a wide variety of weather sources for their initial go or no-go decision during the preflight phase, but use fewer weather sources in the cockpit while in-flight. Pilots highlighted the sparsity and sometimes inaccuracy of the weather information available to them in their prototypical operational domain. To compensate, they are forced to rely on local and experiential weather knowledge to supplement weather reports while still working to mitigate other external pressures. Based on the literature and on results from this work, recommendations are made to address the weather-related gaps faced by the rotorcraft community. This includes the installation of additional weather reporting stations outside of airports and densely populated areas, the further promotion of the HEMS tool to helicopter pilots in all industries, the development of weather tools capable of visualizing light precipitation such as fog, and the development of in-flight graphical displays that can help reduce the cognitive workload of interpreting weather information.

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An Analysis of Cognitive Demands in Ship-Based Helicopter-Landing Maneuvers

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

Piloted Simulation of Helicopter Shipboard Recovery with Visual and Control Augmentation

Impact of Adverse Weather on Commercial Helicopter Pilot Decision-Making and Standard Operating Procedures

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