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Touchscreens are being introduced to various mobile environments that are, at times, affected by vibrations and turbulence, such as modern car cockpits or flight decks of commercial and military aircraft. To assess and enhance the usability of touchscreens in these domains, this experiment examined the performance effects of turbulence on two flight-related tasks and the effectiveness of visual and auditory feedback for supporting error detection, fast completion times and multitasking. Nineteen pilots performed a flight plan entry and a checklist task in calm and turbulent conditions during manual flight and on autopilot. Results show that unaided performance suffers greatly in turbulence, both in terms of the number of errors and completion time. However, visual and auditory feedback both helped reduce these performance costs by improving error detection and multitasking. Participants preferred auditory feedback for text entry during manual flight and in turbulence. The findings from this study can inform the design and evaluation of touch screens for mobile environments, such as the flight deck, ambulances and surveillance operations.

Future aviation operations will require pilots to assume new tasks, such as self-separation. Tactile displays are a promising means of supporting this task. They are well suited for presenting spatial information and offload the heavily taxed visual and auditory channels. This experiment assessed the effectiveness of tactile spatial alerts for notifying pilots of an aircraft intruding on their flight path during Closely Spaced Parallel Approaches. Two alerting strategies (single-stage vs. graded) and two alert types (status vs. command) were compared. 19 pilots had to fly a series of approaches, detect tactile alerts and perform evasive maneuvers. The detection rate for tactile alerts was 100%. Graded and status alerts led to the highest response accuracy (100% and 98%, respectively). Response times were faster for command alerts and during manual flight. These results indicate that tactile displays are effective for conveying spatial information and can help prevent collisions in future aviation operations.

Objective The aim of this study was to establish the effects of simultaneous and asynchronous masking on the detection and identification of visual and auditory alarms in close temporal proximity. Background In complex and highly coupled systems, malfunctions can trigger numerous alarms within a short period of time. During such alarm floods, operators may fail to detect and identify alarms due to asynchronous and simultaneous masking. To date, the effects of masking on detection and identification have been studied almost exclusively for two alarms during single-task performance. This research examines 1) how masking affects alarm detection and identification in multitask environments and 2) whether those effects increase as a function of the number of alarms. Method Two experiments were conducted using a simulation of a drone-based package delivery service. Participants were required to ensure package delivery and respond to visual and auditory alarms associated with eight drones. The alarms were presented at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). The dependent measures included alarm detection rate, identification accuracy, and response time. Results Masking was observed intramodally and cross-modally for visual and auditory alarms. The SOAs at which asynchronous masking occurred were longer than reported in basic research on masking. The effects of asynchronous and, even more so, simultaneous masking became stronger as the number of alarms increased. Conclusion Masking can lead to breakdowns in the detection and identification of alarms in close temporal proximity in complex data-rich domains. Application The findings from this research provide guidance for the design of alarm systems.