Visual, Tactile, and Bimodal Presentation of Lateral Drift in Simulated Helicopter

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.

Evaluation of Tactile Drift Displays in Helicopter

“…That performance with the best tactile drift display configurations (basic with slow onset rate and complex with static onset rate) was equal to the already validated visual display supports the possibilities of using a tactile display. This also confirms results from our previous research that has shown that lateral drift, in principal, can be controlled equally well with both visual and tactile drift displays [11].…”

VibEd: A Prototyping Tool for Haptic Game Interfaces

“…Our evaluation also pointed towards many possible improvements. An interesting venue for development is how to prototype patterns of vibrations that move across multiple engines, as for example in a haptic vest (Oskarsson, Lif, Hedström, Andersson, Lindahl & Tullberg, 2013;Prasad, Teale, Goldberg, Hammond, 2014;Prasad, Teale, Olubeko, Hammond, 2014). How to prototype other forms of haptic feedback (e.g.…”

“…The location of a vibration on the body can also be used to express different meanings. That is, a signal on the left shoulder could represent something else than a signal on the right shoulder (Oskarsson, Lif, Hedström, Andersson, Lindahl & Tullberg, 2013;Prasad, Teale, Goldberg, Hammond, 2014;Prasad, Teale, Olubeko, Hammond, 2014). A tactile vest with several vibrotactile actuators allow for spatiotemporal patterns, such as a vibration that moves down the users back or from left to right.…”