Vibrotactile display of flight attitude with combination of multiple coding parameters

Abstract

Vibrotactile (vibratory tactile) displays have been reported as effective in enhancing awareness of flight attitude for pilots and releasing other heavily loaded sensory channels. Although some work has been done on vibrotactile coding of flight attitude, there is lack of a systematic investigation into coding methods with combination of multiple coding parameters. In this paper, seven coding methods with seven combinations of multiple coding parameters (location, rhythm, intensity, and mode) were systematically studied to cue flight attitude for pilots with vibrotactile vest. We conducted two psychophysical experiments in a static environment in which the attitude information in the form of vibrotactile feedback are presented randomly, and quantitatively evaluated the effectiveness of the vest according to the users' recognition accuracy, reaction time and information transfer rate. The results show that vibrotactile vest is effective to cue attitude information. The preferred coding method with combinations of location, rhythm and mode allowed users to perform with lowest reaction time and highest recognition accuracy and yield about 255 bits/min of information transfer rate. Overall, the presented work provides valuable insights and guidance for the design of vibrotactile aids for the pilots.