It is possible to reduce the SGI in non-pilots by means of a synthetic horizon and simple visual flow conveyed by a head-tracked HMD. This may reflect the power of a more intuitive display for reducing the SGI.

No abstract

Helicopter landing and take-off in degraded visibility caused by blowing sand or dust (brown-out) may distort the pilot's comprehension of the helicopter's position. This is a serious problem that may lead to unattended lateral drift or descending rate. We have previously shown advantages of redundant tactile and multimodal information a simulated combat vehicle. In order to investigate if lateral drift in a helicopter can be reduced by use of a drift display an experiment with a simulated helicopter was performed. Three types of drift displays were tested: visual, tactile, and bimodal display and compared with the primary display that did not present lateral drift. Compared with the primary display lateral drift was reduced with all three drift display configurations. This indicates the value of a drift display in the helicopter and the possibilities of disengaging the pilot's vision for parallel tasks by the use of tactile or bimodal drift displays.

Brownout during helicopter landing and takeoff is a serious problem and has caused numerous accidents. Development of displays indicating drift is one part of the solution, and since the visual modality is already saturated one possibility is to use a tactile display. The main purpose in this study was to investigate how tactile displays should be coded to maintain or increase the ability to control lateral drift. Two different tactile drift display configurations were compared, each with three different onset rates to indicate the speed of lateral drift. A visual drift display was used as control condition. The results show that best performance is obtained with the basic display with slow onset, and with complex display with constant onset rate. The results also showed that performance with the best tactile drift display configurations was equal to the already validated visual display.

We investigated three types of display combinations for threat cueing in a simulated combat vehicle. The display combinations consisted of two bimodal combinations, a visual head-up display (HUD) combined with 3D audio; a tactile torso belt combined with 3D audio; and a multimodal combination, the HUD, tactile belt, and 3D audio combined. The participant's main task was to as fast as possible align the heading of the combat vehicle with the displayed direction to a threat. To increase general task difficulty and provide a secondary measure of mental workload, the participant also was required to identify radio calls. Threat localization accuracy was highest and reaction time shortest with the use of both the HUD combined with 3D audio and with the multimodal display. Subjective ratings of perception of initial threat direction were most positive for both the tactile belt combined with 3D audio and for the multimodal display. The ratings of perceived threat direction at the final phase of threat alignment, however, were most positive for the HUD combined with 3D audio and for the multimodal display. Thus, the multimodal display with HUD, tactile belt, and 3D audio combined proved to be beneficial for all measures.