Attitude Indicator Design and Reference Frame Effects on Unusual Attitude Recoveries

Lee, Bong Geun; Myung, Rohae

doi:10.1080/10508414.2013.746536

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In current attitude indicators, two different designs can be distinguished: (A) the artificial horizon is moving relative to a fixed illustration of an aircraft (sometimes referred to as inside-out, moving horizon or western-style attitude indicators), which was used in this study; (B) a fixed horizon and an aircraft symbol that is moving depending on the bank angle (outside-in or Russian-style attitude indicator). Both versions appear to have context- and training-dependent benefits 22 and there is no clear consensus in the aviation community about the superiority of one or the other. Given that both rely on different modes of perspective taking, a better characterization of the underlying neurobiological systems and their performance in situations with high workload and stress, can be highly informative for future instrument design.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurobiological differences in mental rotation and instrument interpretation in airline pilots

Sladky

Stepniczka

Boland

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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Airline pilots and similar professions require reliable spatial cognition abilities, such as mental imagery of static and moving three-dimensional objects in space. A well-known task to investigate these skills is the Shepard and Metzler mental rotation task (SMT), which is also frequently used during pre-assessment of pilot candidates. Despite the intuitive relationship between real-life spatial cognition and SMT, several studies have challenged its predictive value. Here we report on a novel instrument interpretation task (IIT) based on a realistic attitude indicator used in modern aircrafts that was designed to bridge the gap between the abstract SMT and a cockpit environment. We investigated 18 professional airline pilots using fMRI. No significant correlation was found between SMT and IIT task accuracies. Contrasting both tasks revealed higher activation in the fusiform gyrus, angular gyrus, and medial precuneus for IIT, whereas SMT elicited significantly stronger activation in pre- and supplementary motor areas, as well as lateral precuneus and superior parietal lobe. Our results show that SMT skills per se are not sufficient to predict task accuracy during (close to) real-life instrument interpretation. While there is a substantial overlap of activation across the task conditions, we found that there are important differences between instrument interpretation and non-aviation based mental rotation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurobiological differences in mental rotation and instrument interpretation in airline pilots

Sladky

Stepniczka

Boland

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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“…The choice of moving element has been studied since the beginning of instrument flying (Johnson & Roscoe, 1972), and the debate continues to this day (Janczyk, Yamaguchi, Proctor, & Pfister, 2015). Research found support for the superiority of the moving-airplane design (Fitts, 1947;Johnson & Roscoe, 1972;Lee & Myung, 2013;Previc & Ercoline, 1999), but there were exceptions as well (Gross & Manzey, 2014;Self, Breun, Feldt, Perry, & Ercoline, 2000). Despite its possible advantages, the moving-airplane design has only seen application on a few Russian airplanes.…”

Section: Moving Elementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactions between the Design Factors of Airplane Artificial Horizon Displays

Ding

Proctor

2017

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

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We investigated three interaction effects between the design factors of artificial horizon displays in the context of an airplane upset recovery task. To explain some inconsistent results from previous research about the superiority of moving-airplane designs, we hypothesized and explored interactions between moving element, roll scale/index, display size, and symbol size. A 24 factorial experiment was conducted with 20 novice subjects on a desktop simulator. Moving element was found to interact with display size and symbol size in an unexpected fashion, although the size of the effects was small. Spatially compatible roll scale/index was strongly supported, while the evidence for moving-airplane was weaker than expected. We explained that when redundant roll angle information is present, subjects tend to focus on the indication that appears most usable to them. Roll scale/index appeared to be more compelling than airplane symbol and horizon for roll indication purposes.

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“…Whereas no differences were found with respect to attitude tracking, i.e. situations where pilots are constantly checking the display and making control inputs to correct small deviations in order to maintain a given attitude (Yamaguchi & Proctor, 2010), the moving-aircraft display was usually found to be significantly better ( more suitable) when pilots had to recover from suddenly occurring unusual attitudes (Johnson & Roscoe, 1972;Lee & Myung, 2013;Roscoe, 1968). Specifically, novice pilots, not yet trained for instrument flying, committed much more reversal errors in their initial correction movements and/or needed longer time to recover when flying with a moving-horizon display compared to a moving-aircraft display.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Spatial Orientation in Novice Pilots

Gross

Manzey

2014

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

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Spatial disorientation (SD) is a common factor in aviation accidents, especially in novice pilots. An experiment was carried out to determine which of four different attitude indicator concepts in combination with two different display backgrounds (abstract vs. synthetic landscape) proves to be the most beneficial for novice pilot performance. Inexperienced pilots had to recover from unusual attitudes by using the standard moving-horizon display, a moving-aircraft display, a frequency-separated display, and a "mixed" display, with the latter two representing hybrid concepts with movements of both aircraft symbol and horizon bar. Participants performed the task of recovering from unusual attitudes most efficiently with hybrid display concepts, suggesting that these display concepts prevent figure-ground reversals and associated pilot errors. Outcomes of the study suggest that the implementation of hybrid display concepts as a backup option when unwillingly entering Instrument Flight Conditions could be a solution for preventing SD in novice pilots.

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Attitude Indicator Design and Reference Frame Effects on Unusual Attitude Recoveries

Cited by 7 publications

References 20 publications

Neurobiological differences in mental rotation and instrument interpretation in airline pilots

Neurobiological differences in mental rotation and instrument interpretation in airline pilots

Interactions between the Design Factors of Airplane Artificial Horizon Displays

Enhancing Spatial Orientation in Novice Pilots

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