<title>Flight testing an integrated synthetic vision system</title>

Abstract

NASA's Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) project is developing technologies with practical applications to eliminate low visibility conditions as a causal factor to civil aircraft accidents while replicating the operational benefits of clear day flight operations, regardless of the actual outside visibility condition. A major thrust of the SVS project involves the development/demonstration of affordable, certifiable display configurations that provide intuitive out-the-window terrain and obstacle information with advanced pathway guidance for transport aircraft. The SVS concept being developed at NASA encompasses the integration of tactical and strategic Synthetic Vision Display Concepts (SVDC) with Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) alerting and display concepts, real-time terrain database integrity monitoring equipment (DIME), and Enhanced Vision Systems (EVS) and/or improved Weather Radar for real-time object detection and database integrity monitoring.A flight test evaluation was jointly conducted (in July and August 2004) by NASA Langley Research Center and an industry partner team under NASA's Aviation Safety and Security, Synthetic Vision System project. A Gulfstream G-V aircraft was flown over a 3-week period in the Reno/Tahoe International Airport (NV) local area and an additional 3-week period in the Wallops Flight Facility (VA) local area to evaluate integrated Synthetic Vision System concepts. The enabling technologies (RIPS, EVS and DIME) were integrated into the larger SVS concept design. This paper presents experimental methods and the high level results of this flight test.

Testing the Efficacy of Synthetic Vision during Non-Normal Operations as an Enabling Technology for Equivalent Visual Operations

“…A synthetic vision system (SVS) enhances this basic functionality with real-time integrity to ensure the validity of the databases, perform obstacle detection and independent navigation accuracy verification, and provide traffic surveillance. Under NASA's Aviation Safety Program/Synthetic Vision Project (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006), NASA and its industry partners developed and deployed SVS technologies for commercial and business aircraft which were shown to provide significant improvements in terrain awareness and reductions for the potential of Controlled-Flight-Into-Terrain incidents/accidents (Arthur, Prinzel, Kramer, Bailey, and Parrish, 2003;Schiefele, Howland, Maris, Pschierer, Wipplinger, and Meuter, 2005;Schnell, Theunissen, and Rademaker, 2005); improvements in flight technical error to meet Required Navigation Performance criteria ; and improvements in situation awareness without concomitant increases in workload compared to current generation cockpit technologies (Kramer, Arthur, Bailey, and Prinzel, 2005). It has been hypothesized that the use of SV technologies on head-up and head-down displays can provide precision approach, landing, and taxi guidance for "all weather" capability to all runways without, perhaps, requiring extensive approach lighting systems, ground-based precision guidance systems such as the ILS, or other airport infrastructure.…”

Simulation evaluation of synthetic vision as an enabling technology for equivalent visual operations

“…Under NASA's Aviation Safety Program/Synthetic Vision Project (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006), NASA and its industry partners developed and deployed SVS technologies for commercial and business aircraft which were shown to provide significant improvements in terrain awareness and reductions for the potential of Controlled-Flight-Into-Terrain incidents/accidents compared to current generation cockpit technologies. [6][7][8][9][10][11] It has been hypothesized that the use of SV technologies on head-up and head-down displays can provide precision approach, landing, and taxi guidance for "all weather" capability to all runways without requiring extensive approach lighting systems, ground-based precision guidance systems such as the ILS, or other airport infrastructure. These technologies may provide "equivalent vision" capabilities which would obviate the need for airport lighting and other infrastructure to support the flight crews' need to visually acquire runways and taxiways using normal vision.…”

Evaluation of head-worn display concepts for commercial aircraft taxi operations

“…2,3 Synthetic vision is a computergenerated image of the external scene topography that is generated from aircraft attitude, high-precision navigation, and data of the terrain, obstacles, cultural features, and other required flight information.…”