Extending helicopter operations to meet future integrated transportation needs

Abstract

Helicopters have the potential to be an integral part of the future transport system. They offer a means of rapid transit in an overly populated transport environment. However, one of the biggest limitations on rotary wing flight is their inability to fly in degraded visual conditions in the critical phases of approach and landing. This paper presents a study that developed and evaluated a Head up Display (HUD) to assist rotary wing pilots by extending landing to degraded visual conditions. The HUD was developed with the assistance of the Cognitive Work Analysis method as an approach for analysing the cognitive work of landing the helicopter. The HUD was tested in a fixed based flight simulator with qualified helicopter pilots. A qualitative analysis to assess situation awareness and workload found that the HUD enabled safe landing in degraded conditions whilst simultaneously enhancing situation awareness and reducing workload. Continued development in this area has the potential to extend the operational capability of helicopters in the future.

Evaluating the reduced flight deck crew concept using cognitive work analysis and social network analysis: comparing normal and data-link outage scenarios

“…In this way, the method aims to foster safer and more effective system performance in a variety of situations. CWA contributes to most and various human factors design issues among which are establishing a Concept of Operations (ConOps; Bodin and Krupenia 2016), function analysis (Millen et al 2011;Stanton and Bessell 2014), normal and emergency situations, function allocation (Jenkins et al 2008), training needs analysis (Fleming and Pritchett 2016;Kilgore and St-Cyr 2006;Lintern and Naikar 2000), operating procedures specification , design advice (Salmon et al 2016), and interface design (McIlroy and Stanton 2015;Stanton et al 2016b). In this connection, the term ConOps refers to defining roles and responsibilities of the principal human operators, the automation tools used by them, and the operating procedures for human-human and human-automation interactions (Bilimoria et al 2014).…”

Seeing through the mist: an evaluation of an iteratively designed head-up display, using a simulated degraded visual environment, to facilitate rotary-wing pilot situation awareness and workload

“…Two questionnaires were administered to participants in order to collect subjective ratings of situation awareness and workload, a Post-Landing Assessment (Stanton et al 2016(Stanton et al , 2017(Stanton et al , 2019 and the Bedford Workload scale (Roscoe and Ellis 1990). The questionnaires were administered immediately following each simulated flight.…”

“…The chosen point was independent to each participant and not standardised to a set altitude or approach. The Post-Landing Assessment Questionnaire was developed by SMEs at a leading rotary-wing aircraft manufacturer, and has been used within previous research (Stanton et al 2016(Stanton et al , 2017(Stanton et al , 2019. The questionnaire required participants to rate their awareness of various flight parameters (e.g.…”

“…The aim of the current work is to develop and test novel head-up display (HUD) technologies that can be used to facilitate rotary-wing flight in degraded visual conditions in order to increase safe operational capabilities. This work is a continuation of previous HUD development work seeking to improve rotary-wing pilots' situation awareness and optimise pilot workload, especially within degraded visual conditions (Stanton et al 2016(Stanton et al , 2017(Stanton et al , 2019. Although HUDs have been well researched and documented within fixed-wing aircraft, their use in rotary-wing aircraft is limited and specific research is required to understand whether the insights gained from work within fixed-wing is applicable to this domain.…”

Tools des Maschinellen Lernens

“…So beschreibt der Begriff In vehicle Infotainment die Möglichkeit, Informationen im Fahrzeug bereitzustellen. Diese Möglichkeit bestand bereits mit eingebauten Radios, wird jedoch durch vernetzte Fahrzeuge in großem Umfang erweitert(Stanton et al, 2016). Eine Möglichkeit das Auto mit dem Internet zu verbinden bietet Apple CarPlay.…”