Traffic and Flight Guidance Depiction on a Synthetic Vision System Display: The Effects of Clutter on Performance and Visual Attention Allocation

Wickens, Christopher D.; Alexander, Amy L.; Horrey, William J.; Nunes, Ashley; Hardy, Thomas J.

doi:10.1177/154193120404800147

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…An alternative display with irrelevant symbols low-lighted failed to enhance detection performance compared to the uncluttered display. In contrast, Wickens and colleagues studied the performance advantage of reduced scanning by cluttering the display with overlay instrumentation symbols [23]. They found that the more cluttered display, depicting PFD instrumentation overlaid on a highway-in-the-sky (HITS) partition, significantly increases performance for both the control of the aircraft and traffic detection compared to a display with low clutter depicting an instrument panel on a separate partition.…”

Section: Clutter and Technical Flight Performancementioning

confidence: 92%

“…For instance, in [6], both the cluttered and uncluttered displays included the information required to fly and presented similar instrumentation panels. However, in [23], [24] the authors tested the usefulness of HITS over the instrument panel on flight performance. These two conditions present information of different nature: HITS shows the flight plan and helps the pilot to anticipate future aircraft maneuvers [28].…”

Section: Clutter Manipulation On Displays: Lack Of a Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…One study found no difference [6], two studies found an advantage for the cluttered display [23], [24], and one study [11] found the best performance for mediumclutter display. These results could lead one to argue that clutter has negligible effects on the flight task, and that cluttering the display does not seem much of a concern.…”

Section: Clutter Manipulation On Displays: Lack Of a Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It also affects complex tasks such as piloting an aircraft, but empirical evidence is not as striking as for visual search. In some cases, adding more visual features on the PFD such as highway-in-the-sky (HITS) can increase the pilot's flight performance [23], [24].…”

Section: Pilot Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Review of visual clutter and its effects on pilot performance: A new look at past research

Doyon-Poulin

Ouellette

Robert

2012

2012 IEEE/AIAA 31st Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC)

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A display can appear cluttered because it shows a lot of information, the information is irrelevant for the task at hand or the information is poorly organized. In this paper, we review past research on pilot's performance under various levels of visual clutter. We found that this research lacks a common rationale to manipulate clutter and we suggest such a rationale. We show that models defining clutter as the number of elements shown on the display fail to explain recent empirical results where displays with minimal clutter do not give the best technical flight performance. The paper ends with three suggestions to de-clutter a display.

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Section: Clutter and Technical Flight Performancementioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Clutter Manipulation On Displays: Lack Of a Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Clutter Manipulation On Displays: Lack Of a Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pilot Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Review of visual clutter and its effects on pilot performance: A new look at past research

Doyon-Poulin

Ouellette

Robert

2012

2012 IEEE/AIAA 31st Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…curved trajectories with high accuracy [4,6,16] . However, these displays may drive the pilot's attention to head-down instrument information at the expense of monitoring the outside scene [3,18] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the benefits of scene linking for a pathway HMD: from laboratory flight experiments to flight tests

et al. 2006

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Pathway-in-the-sky displays enable pilots to accurately fly difficult trajectories. However, these displays may drive pilots' attention to the aircraft guidance task at the expense of other tasks particularly when the pathway display is located head-down. A pathway HUD may be a viable solution to overcome this disadvantage. Moreover, the pathway may mitigate the perceptual segregation between the static near domain and the dynamic far domain and hence, may improve attention switching between both sources. In order to more comprehensively overcome the perceptual near-tofar domain disconnect alphanumeric symbols could be attached to the pathway leading to a HUD design concept called 'scene-linking'. Two studies are presented that investigated this concept. The first study used a simplified laboratory flight experiment. Pilots (N=14) flew a curved trajectory through mountainous terrain and had to detect display events (discrete changes in a command speed indicator to be matched with current speed) and outside scene events (hostile SAM station on ground). The speed indicators were presented in superposition to the scenery either in fixed position or scene-linked to the pathway. Outside scene event detection was found improved with scene linking, however, flightpath tracking was markedly deteriorated. In the second study a scene-linked pathway concept was implemented on a monocular retinal scanning HMD and tested in real flights on a Do228 involving 5 test pilots. The flight test mainly focused at usability issues of the display in combination with an optical head tracker. Visual and instrument departure and approach tasks were evaluated comparing HMD navigation with standard instrument or terrestrial navigation. The study revealed limitations of the HMD regarding its see-through capability, field of view, weight and wearing comfort that showed to have a strong influence on pilot acceptance rather than rebutting the approach of the display concept as such.

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Examining the Effects of Conformal Terrain Features in Advanced Head‐Up Displays on Flight Performance and Pilot Situation Awareness

Kim

Kaber

2012

Hum Ftrs & Erg Mfg Svc

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Synthetic vision systems (SVS) render terrain features for pilots through cockpit displays using a GPS database and three-dimensional graphical models. Enhanced vision systems (EVS) present infrared imagery of terrain using a forward-looking sensor in the nose of an aircraft. The ultimate goal of SVS and EVS technologies is to support pilots in achieving safety under low-visibility and night conditions comparable to clear, day conditions. This study assessed pilot performance and situation awareness (SA) effects of SVS and EVS imagery in an advanced head-up display (HUD) during a simulated landing approach under instrument meteorological conditions. Videos of the landing with various HUD configurations were presented to eight pilots with a superimposed tracking task. The independent variables included four HUD feature configurations (baseline [no terrain imagery], SVS, EVS, and a combination of SVS and EVS), two visibility conditions, and four legs of the flight. Results indicated that SVS increased overall SA but degraded flight path control performance because of visual confusion with other display features. EVS increased flight path control accuracy but decreased system (aircraft) awareness because of visual distractions. The combination of SVS and EVS generated offsetting effects. Display configurations did not affect pilot spatial awareness. Flight performance was not different among phases of the approach, but levels and types of pilot SA did vary from leg to leg. These results are applicable to development of adaptive HUD features to support pilot performance. They support the use of multidimensional measures of SA for insight on pilot information processing with advanced aviation displays. C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Traffic and Flight Guidance Depiction on a Synthetic Vision System Display: The Effects of Clutter on Performance and Visual Attention Allocation

Cited by 23 publications

References 9 publications

Review of visual clutter and its effects on pilot performance: A new look at past research

Review of visual clutter and its effects on pilot performance: A new look at past research

Investigating the benefits of scene linking for a pathway HMD: from laboratory flight experiments to flight tests

Examining the Effects of Conformal Terrain Features in Advanced Head‐Up Displays on Flight Performance and Pilot Situation Awareness

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