Pathway concepts experiment for head-down synthetic vision displays

Abstract

Eight 757 commercial airline captains flew 22 approaches using the Reno Sparks 16R Visual Arrival under simulated Category I conditions. Approaches were flown using a head-down synthetic vision display to evaluate four tunnel ("minimal", "box", "dynamic pathway", "dynamic crow's feet") and three guidance ("ball", "tadpole", "follow-me aircraft") concepts and compare their efficacy to a baseline condition (i.e., no tunnel, ball guidance). The results showed that the tunnel concepts significantly improved pilot performance and situation awareness and lowered workload compared to the baseline condition. The dynamic crow's feet tunnel and follow-me aircraft guidance concepts were found to be the best candidates for future synthetic vision head-down displays. These results are discussed with implications for synthetic vision display design and future research.

A Dynamic Channel Depiction of Navigation Data in Synthetic Vision Displays

“…The crows feet concept is a re-implementation of the NASA dynamic tunnel implementation © Jeppesen 4B3-11 described in [3]. It is the first published tunnel-inthe-sky geometry which is fully dynamic.…”

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

“…This pathway guidance combination was found to be the optimal based on results from two NASA SVS pathway guidance simulation studies. 5,6 The dynamic tunnel concept consists of a series of "crow's feet" which represented the truncated corners of nominally-connected 2-dimensional rectangles spaced at 0.2 nm increments along the desired path. The crow's feet grow as a function of path error to provide the pilots feedback on how well they were flying the defined path.…”

Effectively Transforming IMC Flight Into Vmc Flight: An Svs Case Study

“…The PBG concept included the crow's foot tunnel pathway or HITS with tadpole guidance command [8] and a pitch-quickened velocity vector, as well as air traffic symbology. The SVS concept included the features of the PBG concept with a terrain background in place of the blue-sky/brown ground presentation.…”

“…Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) displays provide pilots with a continuous view of terrain, and when combined with integrated advanced guidance symbology, have been shown to significantly increase situation awareness (SA) and pilot performance while decreasing workload during operations in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. It has been hypothesized that SVS displays may improve safety and operational flexibility of flight in IMC to a level comparable to clear-day Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC), regardless of actual visibility [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…It has been hypothesized that SVS displays may improve safety and operational flexibility of flight in IMC to a level comparable to clear-day Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC), regardless of actual visibility [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Significant progress has been made towards evolving SVS displays, establishing their potential overall benefits and refining intended uses [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. While a substantial amount of data has been accumulated demonstrating the capabilities of SVS to improve SA and reduce workload, a fundamental in-flight comparison to current day general aviation (GA) "round dials" cockpit instrumentation was warranted to further quantify those improvements and translate them into meaningful potential safety and operational benefits.…”