Evaluation of Technology Concepts for Energy, Automation, and System State Awareness in Commercial Airline Flight Decks

Kramer, Lynda J.; Etherington, Timothy J.; Evans, Emory T.; Daniels, Taumi S.; Young, Steve; Barnes, James R.; Schuet, Stefan; Lombaerts, Thomas; Sherry, Lance

doi:10.2514/6.2019-0982

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…[3] Research on improving pilot understanding of the current status of their automation shows promising designs, yet a simple indication like a cross was not conclusively shown to be effective. [4,5] On the other hand, once the limits are exceeded, for example in a stall, the information on the PFD can be augmented with recovery guidance which delivers recovery performance improvements as shown in three simulator evaluations. [6] Apart from the visual channel, pilots can also perceive information through the sense of touch.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Asymmetric Vibrations for Feedback on Flight Envelope Protection

Baelen

Ellerbroek

Paassen

et al. 2020

AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum

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Modern aircraft use a variety of fly-by-wire control devices and combine these with a flight envelope protection system to limit pilot control inputs when approaching the aircraft limits. The current research project aims to increase pilot awareness of such a protection system through the use of force feedback on the control device, i.e., haptics. This paper describes a new iteration of a design with the specific aim to warn the pilot when approaching a limit and provide a clear direction of suggested control input. This is achieved by using vibrations asymmetric in both amplitude, i.e. the mean of the signal is non-zero, and time, i.e. a cue which has a rise time different from the fall time. An evaluation is performed where 24 active PPL/LAPL pilots flew a challenging vertical profile and encountered a windshear. The pilots are divided in two groups: one group performing four flights with haptic feedback, followed by four without, the other groups has a reversed order. Although acceptance ratings slightly improved when providing haptic feedback, the other metrics are unchanged when switching between haptic feedback conditions, due to a large training effect during the first four runs. The results do show that enabling the haptic feedback does seem to improve the learning rate over the first runs, and no after effects are present when feedback is removed. As such, next to the fact that most pilots indicated that they expect an improved safety, this experiment shows a potential training benefit of haptic feedback. Nomenclature Symbols b Damping, Nms/rad I Amplitude of the discrete tick, Nm k Spring, N/rad m Mass, kg n Load factor, g q Pitch rate (θ), rad/s V Velocity, m/s α Angle of attack, rad δ Control device deflection, rad θ Pitch angle, rad φ Bank angle, rad

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Asymmetric Vibrations for Feedback on Flight Envelope Protection

Baelen

Ellerbroek

Paassen

et al. 2020

AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum

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“…However, to be effective the X's must be noticed and processed and that is where visual-only cues can be problematic. In two cases when using EACI, pilots did not recognize the speed loss until stick shaker was activated [8]. These data points are shown outside the BL-like spread.…”

Section: A Pilot Recognition Of Airpeed Lossmentioning

confidence: 93%

Usability Evaluation of Indicators of Energy-Related Problems in Commercial Airline Flight Decks

Evans

Kramer

Etherington³

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE/AIAA 38th Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC)

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A series of pilot-in-the-loop flight simulation studies were conducted at NASA Langley Research Center to evaluate indicators aimed at supporting the flight crew's awareness of problems related to energy states. Indicators were evaluated utilizing state-of-theart flight deck systems such as on commercial air transport aircraft. This paper presents results for four technologies: (1) conventional primary flight display speed cues, (2) an enhanced airspeed control indicator, (3) a synthetic vision baseline that provides a flight path vector, speed error, and an acceleration cue, and (4) an aural airspeed alert that triggers when current airspeed deviates beyond a specified threshold from the selected airspeed. Full-mission high-fidelity flight simulation studies were conducted using commercial airline crews. Crews were paired by airline for common crew resource management procedures and protocols. Scenarios spanned a range of complex conditions while emulating several causal factors reported in recent accidents involving loss of energy state awareness by pilots. Data collection included questionnaires administered at the completion of flight scenarios, aircraft state data, audio/video recordings of flight crew, eye tracking, pilot control inputs, and researcher observations. Questionnaire response data included subjective measures of workload, situation awareness, complexity, usability, and acceptability. This paper reports relevant findings derived from subjective measures as well as quantitative measures.

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