Visual cueing and control for general aviation application

Abstract

New technologies are now becoming available and affordable for General Aviation (GA) cockpits that will enable a leap in the capabilities of the systems and the pilot-interface design; this provides the avionics engineer capability that is not constrained to the traditional electro-mechanical design formats. As the complexities of the aviation environment increase and more data is available in the cockpit, the human factors challenges will only multiply. Honeywell is working on a display interface system entitled Visual Cueing and Control (VC2™) that attempts to improve the delivery of key information to the GA pilot in a pilot-centered format. VC2 is an integrated display presentation concept for tactical flight path management that is intended to simplify instrument flight by replicating many of the cues basic to visual flight. The NASA-sponsored "Highway in the Sky" (HITS) has also been developed as a new technique to improve the safety and ease of GA flying through affordable glass cockpit technology (AGATE Flyer, 2000). However, based on the proposed concepts, HITS has some unresolved documented human factors issues that include storing a 3-D flightplan, clutter, cognitive tunneling and complacency. While elements of HITS have shown some promise, this paper will discusses VC2 as an alternative advanced display concept.