Development of an intelligent symbology management system for HMDs in rotorcraft

The primary objective of the proposed project is to determine the feasibility of an innovative intelligent symbology management system for use with helmet mounted display (HMD) systems on military aircraft. Current thumb-control moding approaches to HMD symbology selection result in high manual, perceptual, and cognitive workload for the Army pilot. We propose to: (a) determine the specific elements of information necessary to support pilot tasks as aircraft flight regimes change during the course of a mission, and document them in a relational database; (b) identify and evaluate innovative flight and mission information symbology management concepts, highlighting the most promising concepts for providing timely information to the pilot; (c) develop an intelligent aid to identify and organize the potential rules for symbology management; (d) develop a portable intelligent symbology management simulator to permit the comparison of candidate intelligent information prioritization/filtering techniques; (e) demonstrate the potential increase in pilotage and mission effectiveness, and the feasibility of the intelligent symbology management systems concepts; and (f) deliver a clear and comprehensive final report for use as a "handbook" in the research area, accomompanied by HMD symbology management simulator software compatible with current desktop or portable PCs.