Testing the effect of audio, visual, and heat stimuli on pilots generated by an aircraft bird strike collision avoidance system

Abstract

An experiment tested the effects of audio, visual, and heat stimuli on pilot performance during high cognitive workload (critical) phases of flight. The experiment tested pilots flying a flight simulator while performing tracking tasks and secondary cognitive tasks with external audio and visual stimuli present. The results of this study indicate that with the tested combination of audio, visual, and heat stimuli present, the change in pilot tracking task performance was not statistically significant. However, pilots’ secondary cognitive task performance decreased with the presence of these external stressors. Although these results indicate that the presence of the tested combination of external stimuli adversely affected pilots’ secondary task performance in a laboratory setting, because of the drastic difference in experimental conditions versus actual flight conditions, it is concluded that the tested combination of stimuli is safe to utilize in any bird strike countermeasure system intended to be implemented on an aircraft.