Michael Meuter’s scientific contributions

During the last years Jeppesen has developed digital terrain, obstacle and airport databases as well as different electronic displays as part of the NASA aviation safety program. This paper describes the continuation of this work, which is now focused on a completely dynamic channel depiction of navigation procedures inside a SVS display. A human factors workshop has been conducted to identify the pilot's expectations and requirements for channel guidance. Pilots from the GA, BA and CA segment and charting experts participated in the workshop. The workshop covered three main topics of the program. A general information and task analysis revealed what information the pilots need while flying a procedure. The two other sessions dealt with the generation of the channel trajectory and the depiction of the channel trajectory

Helicopters are widely used for operations close to terrain such as rescue missions; therefore all-weather capabilities are highly desired. To minimize or even avoid the risk of collision with terrain and obstacles, Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) could be used to increase situational awareness. In order to demonstrate this, helicopter flights have been performed in the area of Zurich, Switzerland. A major component of an SVS is the three-dimensional (3D) depiction of terrain data, usually presented on the primary flight display (PFD). The degree of usability in low level flight applications is a function of the terrain data quality. Today's most precise, large scale terrain data are derived from airborne laser scanning technologies such as LIDAR (light detection and ranging). A LIDAR dataset provided by Swissphoto AG, Zurich with a resolution of 1 in was used. The depiction of high resolution terrain data consisting of 1 million elevation posts per square kilometer on a laptop in an appropriate area around the helicopter is challenging. To facilitate the depiction of the high resolution terrain data, it was triangulated applying a 1.5m error margin making it possible to depict an area of 5x5 square kilometer around the helicopter. To position the camera correctly in the virtual scene the SVS had to be supplied with accurate navigation data. Highly flexible and portable measurement equipment which easily could be used in most aircrafts was designed. Demonstration flights were successfully executed in September, October 2005 in the Swiss Alps departing from Zurich.

This paper describes flight trials performed in Centennial, CO using a Piper Cheyenne owned and operated by Marinvent. The goal of the flight trial was to evaluate the objective performance of pilots using conventional paper charts or a 3D SVS display. Six pilots flew thirty-six approaches to the Colorado Springs airport to accomplish this goal. As dependent variables, positional accuracy and situational awareness probe (SAP) statistics were measured while analysis was conducted by an ANOVA test. In parallel, all pilots answered subjective Cooper-Harper, NASA TLX, situation awareness rating technique (SART), Display Readability Rating, Display Flyability Rating and debriefing questionnaires. Three different settings (paper chart, electronic navigation chart, 3D SVS display) were evaluated in a totally randomized manner. This paper describes the comparison between the conventional paper chart and the 3D SVS display. The 3D SVS primary flight display provides a depiction of primary flight data as well as a 3D depiction of airports, terrain and obstacles. In addition, a 3D dynamic channel visualizing the selected approach procedure can be displayed. The result shows that pilots flying the 3D SVS display perform no worse than pilots with the conventional paper chart. Flight technical error and workload are lower, situational awareness is equivalent with conventional paper charts.