H/OZ: PFD and Collaborative Flight Control System

Researchers at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition invented OZ, a primary flight display that provides a single, unified graphic display of critical flight information. OZ virtually eliminate the need to scan flight instruments and provides superior performance for flight in low visibility conditions compared to current integrated avionics displays. eSky licensed OZ and is commercializing it for general aviation applications. eSky previously demonstrated the superiority of OZ over current integrated avionics PFDs in high workload situations. NASA Langley and the German Aerospace Laboratory invented researchers H-mode, a collaborative flight control system that shares flight control between pilot and automation allowing the pilot to remain in-the-loop with a high level of situational awareness while retaining aeronautical decision making authority. In phase 1 eSky designed an integrated system (H/OZ) that uses OZ as the primary flight display in the H-mode flight control system (HFCS). H/OZ allows the pilot to maintain superior situational awareness while remaining engaged in the managing and directing the flight. eSky incorporated into both HFCS and OZ graphical elements new to both that support improved functionality. H/OZ has the following primary advantages over current integrated avionics systems: superior situational awareness; critical navigational information displayed on the PFD; real-time seamless allocation of control between pilot and automation; Point to Program (P2P) mechanism for visually selecting airspace elements for guidance; Focus to Display (F2D) mechanism for displaying on PFD and MFD screens only situationally relevant airspace information. eSky will integrate HFCS and OZ into a prototype H/OZ simulator with new functionality and conduct extensive usability and performance tests of the H/OZ system using human volunteers.