Conference Paper
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Abstract

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a visual display in supplementing haptic feedback on the side stick as a way to communicate flight envelope boundaries to pilots. The design adds indications for the limits in airspeed, load factor, angle of attack and angle of bank to a standard Airbus primary flight display (PFD). The indications not only show the limits of the flight envelope, but also indicate magnitude and direction of the haptic cues. Fifteen professional Airbus pilots and one Airbus sim instructor participated in an experiment in the SIMONA Research Simulator at Delft University of Technology. Several approaches in three different scenarios were flown in alternate law with the old and new PFD, while haptic feedback was always enabled. Objective results do not show clear improvements with the new display, although the time spent outside the flight envelope is slightly reduced. Subjective results indicate a preference, however, for the new display and an increased understanding of the haptic feedback. Further research is recommended to focus on improving the design by removing unused indications and setting up an experiment with a bank scenario that allows the use of operational bank limits rather than artificially reduced limits.

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... A Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test did not show statistical significant differences in experience between groups ( 2 = 3.17, > 0.2). Participants were instructed to always remain within the nominal limits of the flight envelope (black line on Fig. 1) which are shown on the PFD using the red indications proposed in Ref. [30]. Additionally, it was mentioned that a simulation run would stop when the aicraft reached an altitude of 50ft above ground level, irrespective of any other event/performance. ...
... The display right in front of the pilot was the PFD showing the critical flight states, shown in Fig. 6b, which included display indications used to show why and when the haptic feedback is active. [30] Next to the visual information, auditory warnings were presented when the aircraft angle of attack was above the maximum value, and when the velocity was above the maximum velocity. ...
... For both the haptic and visual interface, all groups are undecided on whether much training is required (Fig. 29d and 29e). The majority of the pilots who received haptic feedback did agree that the visual and haptic feedback did not give conflicting signals, attesting to the design work reported in Ref. [30]. Nevertheless, a difference in groups might be present on whether the pilots were fighting the haptic system: Fig. 29f shows that for the majority of the cueing group this was not an issue, whereas the majority of the guidance group reported to be 'fighting' the haptic system. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
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. A previous design used asymmetric vibrations to cue the pilot on the flight envelope. The evaluation showed no improvement in metrics at the first emergency encounter, yet did show a potential training benefit. Therefore, a new haptic feedback concept was designed with the specific aim to guide the pilot when approaching a limit and provide support from the first time use. This paper evaluates these haptic feedback designs with 36 active PPL/LAPL pilots who flew a challenging vertical profile and encountered a windshear in a fixed-base simulator. The pilots were divided in three groups who received either cueing, guidance, or no haptic feedback. It was hypothesized that: (i) cueing haptic feedback provides a faster learning rate compared to no-haptics, and (ii) guidance haptic feedback results in best performance from the first run yet worse metrics when no feedback is provided. Comparing the results of the cueing and no-haptic feedback groups confirmed the first hypothesis. Results also showed that the guidance haptic feedback resulted in improved metrics at the first run, and the worsening of metrics when no longer provided.
... As these pilots are not necessarily active Airbus pilots, they are reminded that the aircraft model used has a mass of 64, 000kg and has to be handled with more care than a general aviation aircraft. Additionally, they are instructed to always stay within the nominal limits of the FE (black line on Fig. 1) which are shown on the PFD using the red indications proposed in Ref. [22]. Additionally it was mentioned that each run would stop at 50 f t above ground level irrespective of any other event/performance due to limitations of the simulation. ...
... The display right in front of the pilot is the PFD showing the critical flight states, shown in Fig. 6b, which includes display indications used to show why and when the haptic feedback is active. [22] Next to the visual information, auditory warnings are presented when the angle of attack is above the maximum value, and when the velocity is above the maximum velocity. ...
... Therefore these experiments indicated that it was beneficial to reduce the degrees of freedom allowed to the pilot participants. [11,22] Therefore, in the present experiment the required flight trajectory is more stringent, as will be discussed below, followed by the emergency scenario encountered. ...
... The lack of participants' training increases results variance in the comparative experiments. One example is a recent study by de Rooij et al. [1], which presented a visual display to supplement haptic feedback on the side stick to maintain safe flight conditions. The experiment involved 15 professional pilots. ...
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